


I am Diving to Drown in You

by naegkawa



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Abandonment, Buddy is going to fall apart and I am SO sorry, Dark Matters being Dark Matters, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Trauma, big parallels between Buddy/Peter and Vespa/Juno, internalized ableism, its not explicit but it's like there i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24480961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naegkawa/pseuds/naegkawa
Summary: Buddy Aurinko pretends not to hear Vespa's footsteps as she leaves their bedroom. Thinking she just needs alone time, she tries to fall back asleep. When she wakes up the next morning to an empty bed and no sign of her wife, the heartbreak is almost too much to bear. With Dark Matters on their tail, Buddy does not know if she can handle the thought of losing Vespa twice.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko & Aurinko Crime Family, Buddy Aurinko & Jet Sikuliaq, Buddy Aurinko & Juno Steel, Buddy Aurinko & Peter Nureyev, Buddy Aurinko/Vespa
Comments: 18
Kudos: 30





	1. I Can't Protect You Now

Vespa Ilkay loved Buddy Aurinko more than anything else in the world. This is why she had to leave her, had to leave everyone. Though she didn’t want to admit it, she cared about everyone on that stupid fucking ship a _lot_ , even Steel and Ransom and their stupid flirting that always made her want to barf. She loved them, in her own Vespa way of loving people. The thought of seeing any of them die because of her carelessness made her sicker than over a decade of radiation poisoning ever could.

It sucked, having to come to terms with being a has-been. She was washed-up, all those years of dangerous exposure had fried the one thing she treasured most about herself: her cunning mind. Now, her peripheral vision was filled with nonexistent figures creeping into her line of sight. Her ears picked up on false sound waves, voices that no one else could hear. It wasn’t safe for her to be there, not with her mind on the fritz. She had already worried Buddy with false alarms more times than she had cared to count. It _hurt,_ every time she saw that look in Buddy’s eye. That look that made Vespa aware that the threat she had called to attention was nothing more than a fabrication of her mind.

It wasn’t the uncertainty of Buddy’s reaction that put Vespa off from having the inevitable, difficult conversation about her need to leave. In fact, it was the fact that she knew _exactly_ how Buddy was going to react. She could picture the exact, hurt look that was going to dwell in her beautiful eye, the precise way her brow was going to furrow in worry, every word of protest verbatim. And that’s what made it so difficult. She _knew_ this was going to hurt her.

But, communication was a vital part of any marriage. If she couldn’t manage to be a good teammate, at least she could try to be a good wife. Despite all of these _stupid_ knots in her stomach, she told Buddy her thoughts. She was useless, dangerous even. She should be replaced.

And there it was. Exactly like she pictured: the furrow in her brow, the hurt look in her eyes. “Vespa, darling, I just got you back. You must think me a fool if you think I’m going to let you go _that_ easily again. I know the circumstances right now aren’t ideal, but—”

“Bud, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’m _useless_ like this. Fuck, it took forever for me to fix Ransom’s leg. I’m just… not as good as I used to be. And I—”

“Useless? My darling, you’re anything but,” Buddy’s expression is soft and loving, though tinged with sadness. She holds Vespa’s hand in her own, but the other pulls it away. “You’re smart, darling, and clever and, yes, you’re sick but that hasn’t meant that you’ve been unsatisfactory at—”

“You’re so in love with me that your judgement is clouded with it. Come on, Bud, how many nights have I woken you up because of a hallucination? How much anxiety have I caused everyone in this family over things that _don’t exist._ Hell, I’ve lunged at Steel a few times when he was just walking around because I thought he was a threat. I’m going to _hurt_ someone. I… I worry I’m going to hurt you.”

“You aren’t going to hurt me. You never _have_ and I know you never will. Besides, you’re learning how to cope with the hallucinations, I know you are. I see the work you’re doing to ground yourself and I’m very proud of—”

“Stop complimenting me to make me feel better! I know I haven’t do—”

“Vespa Ilkay, you will _let_ me finish my sentences before speaking! During this entire conversation, you have cut me off every time. A conversation is _two-sided_ , darling. I do not need to be lectured about how inadequate the woman I love is, thank you very much. Now, will you let me say my thoughts on the matter, or are you going to interrupt me again?”

Vespa didn’t like when she made Buddy upset like this. She felt her throat tighten; she wasn’t going to _cry_. Not now. “Yeah, but—” she stops herself this time. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, darling,” her voice is much more matter-of-fact now, like she’s talking as her captain instead of her soulmate. “Anyway, you provide a great service to everyone on the _Carte Blanche_ , not only as an immensely skilled assassin and killer, but also as a human being. Could I find another medic or another killer? Yes. I’m Buddy Aurinko, I could get anyone in the goddamn galaxy if I so pleased. But, I don’t _want_ just anyone. I want _you._ And I have for almost a quarter of a century now. You are more than the sum of your parts, darling. _I_ need you.”

Vespa didn’t know when she had started to cry, but she wanted it to _stop_. Buddy placed her hand tenderly on her face and wiped away the tear that was running down her cheek. Vespa turned her head to kiss her palm, the short, hitched breath from her previous sobs still present.

“I… I’m sorry, Bud. I… I really should get back to work, I—” she took a deep breath. “I love you _so_ much.”

“I know,” Buddy places a kiss on Vespa’s forehead and, even without looking, she knows there’s a mark of red lipstick there. “I love you too, with every atom in my body.”

Vespa went back to work on something, now in solitude. Her mind still swarmed with insecurities, those stupid voices ringing in her ears. She tried to cover her ears, but the voices only got louder.

They liked to change forms sometimes, but all shouting horrid things to her. It was her father, treating her like some little boy, calling her names she hasn’t responded to in decades. It was Ransom, spitting venom in ways she knew weren’t _technically_ wrong. It was Steel, wearing a scowl and mocking her for being nothing more than Buddy’s pet, something _less than._ No matter what it was always less than, less than, less than. She was _nothing._ Worse than nothing. Air doesn’t take up resources but too much dead-weight can bring an entire ship down.

It was a cacophony in her head today. She shook her head, one-two-three times, hoping to shake off some of the voices as if they were fleas. Then there Steel’s voice again:

“Shake me off like a little dog, Vespa. Go ahead. You’re already the Captain’s bitch, aren’t you?”

“SHUT UP!”

She threw a mostly-empty jar of paste at _Juno Steel_ . She knew there was nothing there, but it was so _fucking_ frustrating that she still threw it and saw the glass shatter into hundreds of pieces, the tiny amount of paste left being wasted on the floor amongst the shards. Fuck. She _needed_ that. She had been giving it to Ransom to ease the pain and help speed the healing process. She sifted through the medical supplies she had left in stock, looking for the same ingredients. Fuck, fuck, _fuck._ She was out of one of the main ingredients: a relatively common interplanetary herb that helped aid the healing process. But… she wasn’t sure if _this_ planet would have it. Of course. Just another thing she had messed up. She screamed out of frustration at the top of her lungs.

“Are you okay, Miss Vespa?” the chipper voice of Rita had popped into the room. “Should I have not popped in? I just heard ya screamin’ and figured I should see if there was an emergency but I can go if ya want me to!”

Rita was very helpful and _annoyingly_ chipper. Vespa would be far more irked with her if she weren’t so goddamn useful. “Just… knocked over the jar of Ransom’s medicine is all. I don’t know if I can find this herb that I need to make more on this planet though.”

“Well, don’t worry about that, Miss Vespa! I’ve been doing some research on where we are, and turns out there’s _loads_ of resources here! I never woulda guessed, but Mista Jet has been logging a lot of what he’s found! I’m surprised he hasn’t given you anything! He told me to give them to you after I’ve finished cataloguing them and I was done with that _days_ ago!”

“…Rita?” Vespa growled. “Jet told _you_ to give them to me. Can I see them?”

“Oh, duh! Mista Steel says I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t attached, but I disagree. I’ve got quite the eidetic memory— I just get distracted from tasks sometimes, yanno? He always acts so mean but that’s just because he doesn’t know how to show he cares about ya, yanno?” Vespa glared again. “Right, Miss Vespa. I’ll bring ‘em right over.”

“Don’t get distracted again,” she grumbled as the short woman bounced outside of the room. When Rita came back, Vespa was more than a little surprised to see the correct herb among the assortment.

“Uh, Miss Vespa?”

“Yes…?” she cocked one eyebrow as she stared Rita down.

“D’ya happen to know when we’re leaving again? We usually don’t stay docked in one place for so long. I just figured I’d ask since you and Miss Buddy are so—”

“That doesn’t mean she gives me special treatment!” Vespa didn’t _mean_ to snap at Rita like that, especially when she had meant no harm in the question. If it weren’t for Steel’s fucking quips, she wouldn’t have been so on edge. She took a deep breath and spoke much calmer, though her voice still carried the growling tone it normally did. “No. I don’t. We know we’re hiding out in the middle of nowhere because we’re being watched. We’re just trying to lose the trail of, well, whoever the fuck is trying to damn hard to find us.”

“Right,” Rita nodded. “This whole thing has been rather scary, what with the whole _thinking-we-were-gonna-die-in-a-spaceship-crash_ thing, yanno? But I’ll leave you to your work, Miss Vespa. Have a nice day!”

“You too, Rita,” Vespa managed to crack a smile— a rarity usually only preserved for Buddy, but she was pleased about the herbs.

“I didn’t know your face _did_ that, Miss Vespa,” Rita’s eyes widened behind her hot pink glasses. “You’ve got a gorgeous smile!”

“No one will believe you,” she comments, already mashing the herbs into a paste. It was a very primitive thing to do, of course, but it was the best way. It made Vespa feel _ancient,_ as if she belonged on Earth two thousand years ago. “Goodbye, Rita.”

“Bye, Miss Vespa!” she waved as she left. Vespa took a deep breath. God, she was going to miss her.

That night, Vespa sat in the kitchen, wringing her hands through her hair when Steel walked in, his shirt half undone and fetching two glasses of water. Ransom. Of course.

“Are you good, Vespa?” he asked. His voice lacked the usual aggression it had when they spoke. “You seem kinda wigged out. More than normal, I mean. Fuck. I mean—”

“I’m _fine,_ Steel,” she growled. “Go back to whatever you were doing with Ransom before you came out here.”

“I—”

“You have lipstick smeared on your neck. I’m crazy, I’m not _blind,_ ” Vespa spoke in a near-hiss: angry, but only as a cover for fear. Or shame.

Steel set the glasses down and sat. He looked her in her eyes, and Vespa for a moment felt as if she was looking at another version of herself. That same fire, that same cunning, that same body that bore scars and was working on being more comfortable discussing their sources. Maybe that’s why she hated him so much. They were similar in ways that reflected the part of themselves they wished most to conceal.

“You aren’t crazy either,” he told her. His voice was… honest and firm. Steel had a tendency to put all of his heart behind every earnest statement he meant. And there it was which… proved something, at least. He meant what he said.

“Whatever,” Vespa brushed him off, primarily because she didn’t know how else to react. “Just… go back to Ransom. He seems clingy.”

When Juno began to walk away, Vespa cleared her throat. “Hey, Steel?” he paused and turned back. “Uh… thanks. I guess. For not calling me crazy.”

He showed a hint of a smile, flickering in and out like candlelight, and headed back down the hallway with the waters. Vespa continued to sit in the kitchen, mindlessly sipping a cup of tea. It gave her something to do, concrete senses to ground herself. She kept repeating them in her mind, the warmth of the cup in her hands, its mint green color, the just-right balance of bittersweet of the tea on her tongue and its earthy scent. And then, a hand gently rested itself on her shoulder.

“Vespa, darling,” Buddy’s warm voice filled the air like a golden melody. Vespa had often let that voice torment her in hallucinations that recurred for years. And when she had been sure that had finally cast off the false Buddy that had plagued her heart, the real one had shown up. “Would you come to bed with me? I would like to spend a good night’s sleep with my wife in my arms. I always forget how much I miss that feeling, even just from one night to the other.”

Buddy kissed Vespa’s shoulder and nuzzled into her neck from behind. Vespa, on instinct, reached a hand behind her to run through Buddy’s gorgeous curls. Vespa always told her that if anyone could manage to make a fabric as soft and wonderful as Buddy’s hair, they would be the richest person in the galaxy.

“Yeah,” Vespa eventually decided as she washed out her tea mug. “I might not fall asleep immediately, though. I’m not really tired yet.”

“That’s fine by me, darling,” the soft and romantic voice of her wife combined with her gentle caresses helped calm Vespa’s nerves slightly. “I love you terribly.”

“I love you too, Bud,” Vespa rose from her seat and kissed her. When they were alone like this, it was always hard for them to pull away from a kiss. Neither of them wanted to stop kissing the other. Lots of things had been like that now. They loved each other so fiercely, so longingly, that the ending of every small separation was a different kind of reunion. The time between kisses and touches. The time between when they went to sleep and when they woke up to see each other. Every time Vespa saw Buddy again, she fell in love. And she could see in Buddy’s eye, how she did too.

The two of them loved each other so fiercely, but it was strange. Their love was simultaneously old and new. Buddy had aged since they had last seen each other, but _oh_ the age looked so good on her. She was scarred from years of radiation, something she hid desperately. Vespa didn’t mind the scarring on her wife’s face, not when it was a sign of relentless devotion to her. But she pinned Buddy’s bangs every day, making sure to press a kiss to the damaged, gray skin like an unspoken confession of adoration.

Vespa felt like she wore age less gracefully than Buddy. Even when Buddy’s joints ached and she found it impossible to move without a cane to lean on, she carried herself with authority. On days when her body betrayed her and confined her to her bed, Vespa still saw the same fiery-haired Buddy Aurinko she had fallen for all those years ago. Even if every strand of those red locks turned white, she would still have that fire in her eyes that made Vespa’s heart pound.

But Vespa— Vespa had a mind that was on the fritz and lacked the charisma and beauty to make up for it. She saw the crow’s feet, the faint worry lines permanently resting themselves on her face. She saw her body littered with scars and her skin losing its old firmness. Buddy had the same wit in her 40s that she did in her 20s— Vespa couldn’t say the same with confidence. 15 years had dealt a bad hand to her, and she struggled to accept the fact that Buddy loved this Vespa as much as she loved the Vespa she had met 20 years prior, even with the clear look of adoration in her eyes.

They kissed again, deep and passionate. Buddy did most things in her life with passion— it was what caught Vespa’s attention in the first place. A prison warden’s daughter who hated the family legacy she carried with such fervor. Vespa had fallen for her at a first glance and had been falling more and more in love with her with every glance since.

Buddy excreted passion from every part of her, her tongue, her eyes, her fingertips cascading down Vespa’s body, her voice making sure Vespa was okay with her actions as every step grew more daring. Passion in the way both of them had lipstick smeared across their face, and in the way she specifically reapplied to pepper them across Vespa’s body. And, after Buddy had calmed her fervor through their collective sighs and love confessions through busy touches, she places herself comfortably in the crook of Vespa’s body. They fit together perfectly— as if God or whatever was out there had specifically crafted one for the other. As if Buddy was clay, and Vespa came from her ribcage— a perfect companion.

“I love you so, so dearly,” Buddy turned a bit and placed a kiss to Vespa’s temple. “It still feels… unreal, almost, doesn’t it? That we get to spend a whole new future together?”

“Yeah, it does,” Vespa said, though her mind was trailing off. Buddy fell asleep in minutes. She watched her in the dark for hours, smelled that scent that had intoxicated her for years. Floral-adjacent, but not quite, beautiful, but deep and tantalizing. She listened to the deep sound of her breathing: Buddy slept deeply, like someone who knew the tomorrow she was going to wake up to would be worth waking up. Like every part of her life was worth something. Vespa could look at her forever because, when she saw Buddy so content, she felt that way too. Like life was worth living.

“Isn’t this such a nice sight?” a voice cruelly whispered into her ear. She could not shake it off when she tried. “Such a shame it’ll all be gone when your mistakes get her killed. Can you handle that, Vespa? Watching the woman you love die in front of you and it _being all your fault?_ Why don’t you just save everyone the hassle and leave?”

One… two… three shakes. All Vespa is met with is a chuckle. “No, no. You’re not getting away from me that easily. Don’t you _see_ , Vespa? This isn’t a hallucination. This is all just your thoughts. Buddy has a purpose. She’s competent. What do you do besides hurt the others around you, Vespa? You can’t even get your head screwed on straight. She’s lost you before. She can get over it again. It’s better than her being dead, isn’t it?”

Vespa growled under her breath, but chose not to disturb Buddy. She rose from the bed, trying her best not to disturb her sleep. 

“Vespa…” Buddy murmured in her sleep, causing her to pause momentarily in her steps. It broke her heart, knowing this was the last she was going to hear her. But she couldn’t just stand there. She knew what had to happen.

Her name was Vespa Ilkay, and for these past few months, she had been lying to herself, thinking that she could have a future with Buddy Aurinko. That things could be like they were. Buddy Aurinko was confident that they could make it work. That they could start a future where they would be happy forever. But no one could be happy forever. Vespa struggled to be happy for five seconds.

She looked back at Buddy as she left, trying to stay quiet. It was for the good of the collective, she decided wholeheartedly. Vespa knew what lived in her future if she continued to stay: more bodies than she could ever deal with and blood on her hands that would never scrub clean. There was nothing she yearned for more than to love Buddy Aurinko for every second of the rest of her life. And she would, but not in the way they both wanted. It would be love from a distance, love through protection, through the prevention of an even worse future.

It was a cruel thing to break her heart like this, but she took her lumps. The world grew a little bigger, a little meaner. Maybe she did, too. Even though this was all motivated through an excess of love and empathy, she had to be a little meaner. It was how she survived.

She snuck out of the _Carte Blanche_ quietly, trying not to disturb any of the other shipmates. Her feet touched solid ground and she did what she was born to do: run. She ran and ran until she felt her legs were going to give out. And she didn’t look back again, no matter how _desperately_ she wanted to.

She could not afford it.


	2. I Feel So Tired, Can't Believe This Is It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buddy has to come to a conclusion she doesn't want to come to: Vespa has made the choice to leave her. Jet can only do his best to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the fic and all of its chapters are from the "Young Enough" album by Charly Bliss.  
> The rest of the fic will be told from Buddy's perspective, I think. But I'm indecisive so who knows.

Buddy had pretended not to hear Vespa’s footsteps. It wasn’t necessarily  _ abnormal  _ for her to wake up in the middle of the night. She would usually spend some time alone, to calm herself down from attacks that she didn’t want Buddy to know she had, and then she would crawl back into bed with Buddy and sleep for a few hours. Buddy wanted to tell herself this was just another one of those times, that she would crawl back into bed like she always did, but the conversation they had had that day rang in her head. Vespa wanted to leave them all. Perhaps she had convinced her to stay with her proclamations of unending love and her reassurance that Vespa served a purpose there, but she couldn’t be sure. She stayed awake for a few more hours, waiting for that door to open. Worry gnawed at her stomach. She  _ had  _ to get up.

Buddy walked quietly on her toes like a cat. She had a bad habit of sneaking up on people unless she announced her presence but, in this situation, it was advantageous. She didn’t want to startle Vespa, especially given that it could be a particularly bad paranoia day where the clicking of heels could put her on edge. She just wanted to  _ see  _ her. Buddy knew Vespa in the way she knew blueprints and strategies, with dedicated studying to every little detail, where she could recall every mark on her skin, every expression she wore. She was relearning her recently, as there was so much new information. But she studied diligently, and she knew what made her jump, how to calm her after a PTSD episode, where she liked to hide away from everyone else.

And Vespa was not in her hiding spots. Any of them. The  _ Carte Blanche  _ was not a large ship by any means. Surely she would have seen  _ some  _ sign of Vespa through searching in all of its nooks and crannies. She was  _ good  _ at hiding and avoiding capture, but not this good. “Vespa, darling?” she called out to an empty hallway. Nothing responded to her but a subtle echo of her own words. “Vespa, please! I’m getting quite tired of this! I understand you need your alone time but I would like to  _ see  _ you to check if you’re okay!”

A door in the hallway opened, and Buddy felt her heartbeat race. “Vespa?” she turned around quickly and felt that racing heart sink into her gut.

“I am not Vespa,” Jet had been the one who opened the door. “The walls here are quite thin. I heard you calling for her and decided it would be best to see what the dilemma was.”

Buddy fell into Jet’s arms and sobbed. She would normally try to keep herself calm and composed and had it been Ransom or Juno or anyone but Jet, who had seen her break down so often before, she would have. “Jet, I can’t find her  _ anywhere.  _ I… I think she might have run off and,  _ God,  _ I don’t know where to even start looking for her on this godforsaken planet and I just… I  _ can’t  _ go through this again, Jet, this is going to kill me, I  _ know  _ it will.”

Jet was never one for comforting words. Buddy knew it had always placed him in an uncomfortable position when she broke down crying like this. He simply wrapped his strong arms around her and ran one of his hands through her hair. “Why do you think Vespa would run off?”

“She  _ told  _ me she was going to,” Buddy admitted. “Well, that she wanted to leave. That she was afraid of hurting us because of her condition but I  _ told  _ her she was being absurd. I told her how much she mattered to me,” she felt like her lungs were being constricted. Her chest was on  _ fire  _ as she struggled for breath and started to shake. “Jet— I— it hurts.”

“You’re having a panic attack,” he told her, his voice not really breaking from its typical monotone. “I would recommend taking steps to try to regulate your breathing.”

“I don’t— I don’t  _ get  _ panic attacks,” she choked out. “Buddy Aurinko never  _ panics _ . I just— I want— I need Ves-Vespa. I don’t get— get why she would  _ leave  _ like this when I— I tried so  _ hard,  _ Jet. So hard to get her back. I—I did so much. I— I— I don’t under-understand.”

“Buddy, focus on your breathing. Deep inhales through the nose and exhales from the mouth,” Jet told her. “You cannot know Vespa’s thoughts and reasonings for leaving. I take it you want us to find her.”

Buddy tried to steady her breathing, which was harder when those shuddering breaths, aftershocks of her violent sobs, made it difficult. “Of  _ course  _ I want us to find her, Jet! We don’t know who keeps following us, but I have a  _ sneaking  _ suspicion it’s Dark Matters and if they catch her, I won’t even get a body to mourn over. It’ll… it’ll be like my father all over again, but a thousand times worse,” she was still shaking and unfocused. “Let’s step outside, Jet. See if there’s any sign of her.”

Vespa was an expert at getting out of sticky situations, and Buddy knew all too well that tracking her down before Dark Matters did would be a daunting, if not impossible, task. Surely enough, when they opened the ship’s doors, there were no footprints, no sign of her or in which direction she had run off. She kneeled down and traced her fingers on smears of dirt. “She covered this footprint. It must have been where she landed, it left a larger dent than it normally would. Oh… Vespa, darling, what have you done…?”

“Captain, I do not think it is the best idea for you to search after her given your current physical health. If Dark Matters is after us, as you suspect, you are the most important asset. You must be the most heavily guarded.”

“I can’t just let her  _ go,  _ Jet. Not again,” her voice was earnest and so,  _ so  _ damn scared. Already, her mind was racing with a thousand images of what could be happening to Vespa right now. And, creeping into her thoughts, was a memory fifteen years prior, of the day she had felt her heart shatter. Of Vespa falling off that building, of their capture. Memories of eight years imprisoned, and fears of knowing Vespa’s fate was  _ far  _ worse. And it would only continue to grow worse if those agents had captured her.

Buddy felt…  _ angry  _ at fate. At how it teased her like a cruel lover that liked to watch her squirm with the idea of sweetness, only to take it away the moment it became tangible. She had spent fifteen years trying to cope with Vespa’s death. She had sacrificed her eye and her beauty for the hope of reunion. She had mentally buried her in her mind, only for it all to be dug up again. And when happiness was so  _ tantalizingly  _ close, when Buddy had found a passion and a purpose to destroy the Board of Fresh Starts, to help the world, the woman she was doing it for slipped like sand through her aching fingers.  _ God,  _ she ached. Every muscle and joint cried out in pain. She hadn’t even brought a cane outside and she leaned herself against the ship, breathing heavily to avoid crying out.

“Buddy, you’re in pain,” Jet pointed out. “You forgot to bring a mobility aid. I would recommend lying down to help take pressure off of your joints.”

“Aren’t you just a regular doctor?” Buddy hissed in pain as she spoke. “I don’t want to lie down, Jet. I want to find my  _ wife  _ before she gets herself killed. I apologize if that’s too unreasonable.”

“It is not unreasonable at all to want to find Vespa. However, doing so would get you killed, which is unreasonable,” Jet wrapped one of Buddy’s arms around him and helped to lift her up, taking some of the stress off of her. “I still think you should lie down, at least to help alleviate your pain.”

The thought of going back to an empty bed made Buddy’s stomach churn. Vespa’s scent would still be clinging to the sheets, her pillow. It would be in her room, mocking her for being foolish enough to believe in their happiness. Part of her hoped that Vespa would be lying there, sleeping soundly, or eagerly waiting for Buddy to join her so the two could melt together. But, she knew it would just be an empty bed. And it nauseated her.

“Jet,” Buddy winced as she walked, every step causing a different nerve to scream out. “I don’t want to go back to my room. I can’t… not right now. Surely, you understand.”

“I have never experienced something like this, but I can surely imagine the pain you must feel. It would be easier if you let me carry you, Buddy,” he’s bent over significantly to allow Buddy to be able to comfortably use him as a crutch.

“Don’t patronize me, Jet,” she chastised him before taking a moment to pause. She let out a sigh and leaned against him more heavily. “I haven’t lost  _ all  _ my pride. Surely there’s some dignity to be found in a Captain sleeping on the couch, making her aching bones even worse. God, aren’t I just the poster child for pathetic right now?” she scoffed at herself.

“I do not think that such a thing exists. Nor do I think your physical disabilities make you any kind of pathetic. You instructed Vespa not to talk that way about her condition, similar to how you instructed me not to talk that way about my own problems. You should listen to your own advice, Captain,” Jet adjusted himself to give her better support as they climbed their way back into the ship. “But, should you feel uncomfortable on the couch, you may lie down in my bed. The sun should be rising soon, which means the rest of the crew should be up soon.”

Buddy looked up at the sky, painted in the most beautiful shade of greens and aquamarines she had ever seen. The sunrises on this planet were unlike any others she had seen, even though she could not identify what in the atmosphere contributed to such beauty. “I hadn’t realized it had gotten so late,” she sighed. “I don’t want to kick you out of your own bed, Jet.”

“It’s no worry,” he explained. “I can sleep just about anywhere you put me. I spend a few nights a week sleeping in Rita’s room anyway, when our streaming marathons run too late, or when Mr. Steel and Mr. Ransom are too enthusiastic for me to focus. I do not think she would mind the change. She says I am, in her words, like a big teddy bear she can hold at night. I think it is absurd. I am quite different from a bear, after all.”

“Well, I’ll thank Rita for that then,” she placed her fingers to her temple and rubbed them slowly in circles. “I need to tell the crew Vespa is missing, or, well, that she ran off. The  _ least  _ she could do is leave a note, so I can ignore the small possibility that she was kidnapped. It’s sick, isn’t it, Jet? That I take more comfort in her being kidnapped than her running away?”

“It isn’t sick, no, but perhaps more concerning. The first stage of grief is denial, after all. I can see why you would deny the fact that Vespa would abandon you. It would definitely… hurt less, I think,” Jet opened the door to his room. It was simple, and exactly the same as it had been when it was first assigned to him. While the rest of the members had decorated their rooms to their liking, or brought at least  _ some  _ kind of personal belongings, Jet’s room was blank of personality, of any identifiers, save for a guitar, tucked away in the corner.

Buddy lied down in the bed and let out a sigh of relief at the weight off of her bones. She thought about what Jet said to her.  _ The first stage of grief is denial.  _ She wasn’t in denial. Vespa was  _ gone,  _ there was no denying that. But, Buddy could get her back. She could find her again. She would sit for all of eternity until radiation tore her atom from atom if that was what it would take. But she could— no, she  _ would _ — get her back. Denial, her ass.

However, her mind kept telling herself that maybe Vespa _didn’t_ run away, that she was plucked from their bed like Buddy had been when those drones had imitated their features. Either way, Vespa needed their help, or she was going to die. But, if she had gotten kidnapped, it felt less heartbreaking. Vespa didn’t weigh the pros and cons and decided that it was more beneficial to tear her heart from her ribcage— bloody and beating for _her_ — and spit on it. It made Buddy feel less… horrid.

She knew she had to tell the crew when they woke up, but she could think of nothing she wanted to do less than try to push down her tears and her absolute  _ terror  _ and every other negative emotion she was feeling. They were her family, she knew this, but she had to be the backbone of the entire operation, the foundation. And if the foundation showed any signs of cracking, the whole thing would become unstable. So, Buddy had to put on her big girl pants and suck it up.

“Buddy,” Jet’s voice came from outside the door. “May I come in?”

“It’s your room, Jet,” she reminded him, her eye distant and her emotion impossible to read. Maybe she felt nothing. Maybe feeling hurt too much. “I have no right to tell you you can’t. What’s going on?”

“I located Vespa’s comms. She seems to have left it to avoid being tracked by Rita. She left a message for you, it appears.”

“Hand it over,” Buddy spoke a  _ tad  _ too quickly, too desperately. “I want to hear what she has to say. I don't understand how I failed to find this before. Where was it, Jet?”

"In the medicine cabinet. I know I'm... not supposed to open it, for reasons we chose not to discuss further, but I figured I could grab you your medicine, so you did not have to procure it yourself in your current state," Jet looked down, as if he feared getting yelled at for going into an area that would knowingly bring up old temptations.

"I'm not going to yell at you. We're down a medic currently. Just hand me the damn comms."

Jet handed Buddy the communicator which she snatched up with fervor. Surely enough, there was a recording file titled  _ Bud  _ in plain sight. Buddy looked up at Jet, trying to control the quiver in her voice. “Jet, could you… could you leave the room momentarily while I listen to this?”

“Yes. Of course,” he nodded and shut the door behind him, leaving Buddy all alone on the bed. All she had to do was press play, yet she couldn’t remember the last time she had faced an action so small, yet so  _ difficult.  _ It was simple, yet she struggled. She took a deep, calm breath as her shaking finger clicked the button. And there it was: Vespa Ilkay and her  _ beautiful,  _ raspy voice speaking in the gentle tone she preserved for Buddy.

“Hey, Bud,” the recording spoke. “I’m sorry. I love you too much to let you die by my hands. I need to protect you from my own incompetence; I can’t stand the chance of you dying because I’m nuts. I understand if you need to hate me. Hell, I hate myself. If that’s what makes it easier, Bud, I want you to hate me. Just know that I love you. Goodbye, Bud.”

And then it clicked off. That was it. That was all she had to say to her after  _ everything  _ they had been through. It… it couldn’t have been. Her Vespa wouldn’t have done that to her, would she? Buddy was crying again. She  _ wanted  _ to be angry at Vespa, but she couldn’t muster up the energy to do so. All she could do was lie back down and press play again.

And again.

And again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (:


	3. I am Trusting, Well-Adjusted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buddy feels alone in the world, unable to leave a bed that isn't even hers. There is one person on the Carte Blanche who knows how she feels, however: Peter Ransom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very mild tw for a mention of an eating disorder. it's nothing graphic, but it is mentioned briefly

Buddy wasn’t sure how long it had been since Vespa was gone. It felt like an eternity, that void that existed in her stomach stretched hours into millenia. It had to have at least been a few days. What felt like days but could have very well been hours or minutes passed with not a wink of sleep, despite the fact that  _ all  _ she wanted to do was sleep. If she slept she wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to let her mind dwell on every little thing she could have done differently to keep Vespa there. If she had fought for her a little harder, if she had been more loving, or less patronizing. If she hadn’t taken Juno’s side in an argument that one time. Maybe Vespa would have stayed.

Buddy Aurinko’s new hobby was beating herself up for things she could not change. And she had gotten  _ very  _ good at it.

When she told the crew, she felt their looks of respect turn quickly to pity. She wanted their respect, dammit, but how could she hope for such a thing when her whole life was crumbling in her hands. Everything she had worked so hard for was turning to dust, and what would Buddy have to show for it?

“Vespa has run away,” Buddy told them, clearly choking back tears. “I tried to convince her to stay, but she snuck out in the middle of the night and left. As we are well-aware by now, there are people following us. Trying to kill us. Vespa is part of this family and I am determined to get her back. However, she is difficult to track down. I can only hope we can catch her before our mystery bounty hunters do.”

The announcement had clearly made everyone uncomfortable. She saw Juno stir uncomfortably in his seat, and she saw Ransom cast a quick glance to him before looking away.

“Are you going to be okay, Captain?” Ransom spoke up, and Juno looked as if he wanted to follow in Vespa’s footsteps. “I cannot imagine this is an easy thing for you to go through.”

“I’ll be fine, Ransom. Thank you for your concern,” she lied through her teeth, and her own words echoed in her ears.  _ Family doesn’t lie to each other.  _ But sometimes, a mother had to tell a white lie for the good of the family. When a mother cried in front of her children, all it did was make the children upset. So, she had to tell herself she would be fine. “I just worry for her safety.”

“Okay, so she ran. How do you expect to find her and get her back?” Juno spoke, though he seemed unable to make eye contact with anyone. Buddy tried to read his expression, but it was strange. He looked  _ guilty,  _ as if he somehow felt responsible for the hurt Buddy was feeling.

“I don’t have a plan for that yet. I will inform you when I do. For now, Jet has been kind enough to let me sleep in his room. Do keep that in mind should you need me.”

Then, the meeting was adjourned, and Buddy went back to her room. She stared off into the distance for… she wasn’t quite sure how long. It was silent there, save for an audio recording playing on what seemed to be a loop.

“Hey, Bud,” Vespa’s voice would always ring out. “I’m sorry…” and it would continue with the same message over and over. And Buddy found herself unable to stop listening to it. It felt like the only thing she had left of her. Vespa asked her to hate her, but she knew that could never happen.

Approximately a day and a half after that awful meeting, there was a knock on her door— polite and almost hesitant. Buddy wasn’t exactly in a proper mood for company given the present situation and the fact that she looked absolutely  _ horrid _ , her eyes all red and puffy with crying, but it would be more suspicious if she had turned away one of her family members for no good reason.

“Captain, may I enter?” Ransom’s voice was clearly heard through the door. “It’s just me, no need to worry about an entourage.”

“Come in, Pete,” she said, sitting herself up and hiding Vespa’s comms underneath her thigh. “The door is unlocked. I’m in quite a lot of pain today, so I would prefer to not have to stand when unnecessary.”

“Of course, Captain,” he said and closed the door behind him. He handed her a glass of water and two small pills. Buddy recognized these as her allergy pills. Of course. She hadn’t been able to eat in 36 hours. And because she missed her last dose, eating today would be a risk considering she might have to let her body readjust to a missed dose... “I don’t want you to have to starve, you know. Although I understand. Grief can do quite a lot of damage to an appetite.”

Buddy took the pills and sipped the water slowly. “Thank you. I suppose I must have forgotten my medication. Vespa usually keeps track of— I guess I had forgotten,” she felt the tears rise in the back of her throat when she mentioned Vespa’s name. Was she doomed to live like this? Always feeling so… horrid whenever something inevitably reminded her of her wife?

“How have you been faring, Captain?” he asked, sitting next to her on Jet’s bed. “And it’s no use lying. In order to be an expert liar, you must also be an expert at  _ detecting  _ lies. And I am one of the best.”

“I haven’t been able to get out of bed since that damn meeting, I’m sure you were able to draw your own conclusions,” Buddy didn’t mean to be so aggressive, she just  _ despised  _ this feeling. She never wanted to turn into this— into something pitiful. “I don’t want your pity, Ransom. I’m a big girl. I can handle this.”

“I’m not here to offer my pity, Captain,” Ransom explained. He sighed and looked down at his feet. It wasn’t common for him to avoid eye contact like this. She watched as his brow furrows. “I’m more so here to offer you… support. From someone who can  _ somewhat  _ understand how you’re feeling currently.”

“Is that so?” Buddy raised an eyebrow in suspicion at Ransom. It occurred to her she knew very little about who he actually was, what he had gone through, what skeletons were in his closet. She knew about the criminal history of the Nameless Thief, but the benefit of being nameless is that the personal history was absent. All she knew about Ransom’s personal life was Juno. How they seemed to be in love now, but how Juno and Ransom were… less than thrilled to see each other at the start.

“You’re hurt, deeply. Wounded, angry,” he explained. “You want to scream into the abyss, but you cannot muster the energy to do so. You want  _ so  _ badly to hate the person who abandoned you, but your brain and heart are at war. The brain wants to hate, but the heart needs to love. And all you can think about is  _ what  _ you could have done differently. You had a whole future on the horizon. You were going to explore the galaxy and then, in one dark night, it all slips like grains of sand through your fingertips.”

Buddy’s eye widened, and that sob kept trying to work its way up with immense determination. “That… that’s exactly how it feels,” her voice shook as she spoke. “I suppose this has happened to you before?”

Ransom nodded, and gave a sad chuckle. “It wasn’t exactly the same situation. Him and I had a far… shorter history than you and Vespa. I can only imagine you must be feeling what I felt tenfold. It was so passionate, though, that love I felt. I had never fallen in love with someone before, and it was so dangerous. I trusted him with so many of my most treasured secrets within hours of meeting him. Instantaneous passion. And it only grew with every meeting. And then… poof. It was all gone. And I was a mess. And, you know me, Buddy, I  _ hate  _ being messy. I pride myself on my composure. You’re very similar.”

“That I am,” she admitted. “This… lover of yours intrigues me, Ransom. You found him again, didn’t you? If your heart broke so terribly, I doubt you could be so infatuated with Juno without closure. You would never risk opening a new wound before the old one closed.”

Ransom let out an almost dreamy sigh and ran his fingers through his dark hair. “Ah, I never did tell you the history between Detective Steel and me, did I? It makes sense why I would refrain from doing so. It’s quite a messy history.”

“Not many people use their ex-boyfriends as references, Pete.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call Juno and I ex-boyfriends,” Peter grimaced as he tried to explain what was most-definitely a complicated relationship. “Rather… I would describe us ex-lovers. It never really had such a… defined relationship. As I said, it all moved rather quickly.”

“But the man who abandoned you and broke your heart was  _ Juno?  _ I wouldn’t have guessed it from him, although when I first met him, he was a man with a lot of baggage piled on his shoulders.”

“He is a much different man from the one who walked out on me over a year ago,” Ransom gave a sad smile. “For a bit, I found it so easy to be cruel to him because he was so different. I thought being mean to him would make it easier to file away all of the hurt I felt. All those feelings that came in swarms when I saw him again.”

This history explained a lot of gaps Buddy had been trying to piece together between the two of them. Why Ransom had put even more effort into his appearance than usual when it was announced they were picking up Juno, how  _ cruel  _ Ransom was to him, how desperately Juno seemed to cling to him, desperate to make amends, the way they avoided eye contact until that mission.

“What happened?” Buddy asked, her words were uncertain and standing on shaking ground. “I don’t want to pry too much, I just… it helps, I suppose.”

“Ah, don’t worry about prying, Captain,” Ransom’s voice was soft and sweet in a way she had never heard before. The way he spoke was not performative, like everything he had given her before. Buddy realized she was not talking to Peter Ransom, but to the actual man himself: a man whose name she did not know, nor really need to know. A man who seemed vulnerable, who exposed the heart he seemed so ashamed of having. She liked this man more than the character he played. “After all, you said so yourself many times. We’re family. You ought to know a bit more about me.”

Buddy watched the way his cheeks flushed when he talked about his first encounter with Juno, the love pouring out of his eyes. “It was odd, meeting him. I was posing as a Dark Matters agent— one of my most impressive jobs, personally— but I was working with him. He, investigating this murder, me pretending to do so but really trying to steal the mask that had killed him. Yet, he’s so… distracting, that lady,” he wore a smile as he spoke. “And he had caught on to who I was. And the  _ moral outrage  _ in his eyes felt so… strange. I had never felt that way about anyone before. He’s a good man, which is so odd, I thought. I thought the world had long since been purged of such… core goodness. And his  _ mind  _ was so cunning. I knew I had fallen for him the moment I heard him speak and saw the passion in those eyes and that mind at work. But, I couldn’t risk getting caught. So, I kissed him, something I had wanted  _ so  _ badly, but also a useful distraction, and gave him the greatest gift I could think of.”

“He knows your real name,” Buddy pointed it out. “We all know he does. It’s apparent in the way he hesitates for a moment before he calls you Ransom. Like he always wants to call you something else. Something much more tangible.”

“That was the gift, dear Captain,” he sighed. “When I left him, I felt… guilty, yes, but I knew our paths would cross again. We were after the same thing, after all. Our fates were… intertwined. And I continued to do these, as you put them, con-bono jobs. But I always thought about him. The way his smile flickered in and out like candlelight, the way he tried to protect his heart, the look in his eyes, the feeling of his lips. I… wasn’t expecting him to leave me. Tell me, if you feel comfortable, what was it that made you fall for Vespa?”

It was strange. She had never trusted Ransom much, save for the fact that she knew him to be someone moral deep down. But, this wasn’t quite Peter Ransom. And she felt like she could tell him anything about her feelings and he would _understand_ her. “Similar reasons to why you fell for Juno, actually. She was a prisoner, originally, a scared young woman in my father’s prison. But she was so _smart_ and careful and… guarded. She had built up such heavy walls around her, but I saw that look in her eyes and it was so paralyzingly human. I wanted to know _everything_ about her. Every nook and cranny of her body, every passing thought that ran through that clever mind of hers. I was a little obsessed with her, in the way a young schoolgirl fawns over her crush. I couldn’t recall a time in my life before that when I felt so… foolish.”

Ransom let out a tiny laugh. “Foolish is definitely the word I would use for it, yes. It certainly does make one a fool, doesn’t it? Love? You would give up even the most precious, closely-guarded things just to make him trust you.”

“Do you think I am a fool to have fallen in love with Vespa, Mister Ransom?” Buddy kept her voice from sounding accusatory. She was more intrigued in his reasoning— in how Peter Ransom viewed love after being scarred so horribly. She wondered how she, herself, currently viewed love. Buddy tried to stray away from being bitter. Vespa loved her, she  _ knew  _ this, but the amount of hurt this love caused her to feel made her wonder… was it all worth it? To suffer so horribly? She wondered equally whether or not high stakes betting was worth it. In order to gain something great, you had to take a great risk. At this very moment, Buddy had a losing hand. The blow hurt more than anything she had ever felt before, but, oh, at one point she had won the jackpot.

“I don’t quite know currently,” it wasn’t the answer Buddy had expected, in all honesty. “If you had asked me a few months ago, I would have said yes without a moment’s hesitation. And yet… there’s this little voice that tells me it isn’t foolish to make yourself vulnerable enough to fall in love. Rather, it makes you… courageous. And, yes, sometimes courage can be foolish, but not always. Sometimes, it is wholly necessary.”

“A little voice?” she chuckled. “Do you mean your  _ heart,  _ Pete? You’ve fallen in love, so condemning love automatically as foolish doesn’t sit right with you anymore because you’ve allowed yourself vulnerability. It is a good thing, though, I enjoy knowing you’re becoming less afraid to think with your heart.”

“You’re a fascinating man, not-Peter not-Ransom,” she looked at him as he spoke and studied each of his mannerisms. “You haven’t spoken about Juno leaving you, only you leaving him.”

“Ah,” he raised his eyebrows and fiddled with the buttons on the sleeves of his shirt. “I suppose the subject is still difficult to talk about at times. Juno and I have talked about it, we still are talking about it. I don’t know if we’ll ever fully  _ stop  _ talking about it. I bring it up in arguments when I get hurt, and then I see the regret in his eye, and then I apologize for the low blow. The truth is, Juno and I had escaped a very dangerous situation together. Near-death experiences cause passions to run so high; surely you understand.”

Ransom scratched anxiously at his neck, where Buddy was able to see them: a pattern of scars, tiny, round burn marks surrounded by light purple fractal patterns— electricity scars. “He pushed himself  _ so  _ hard so I wouldn’t die. He lost his eye for me. He… almost lost his life. There was a moment in time when he locked himself in a room with a bomb that he thought was going to tear him atom by atom, like the  _ stupid,  _ sacrifical lamb he always tried to make himself out to be. Moments before he thought he was going to die, he told me that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. That he regretted that we would never be able to travel the galaxy together. And when I saw him exit that room, I felt myself fall apart. Any sense of logic I had fell out the window. As if the only thing that mattered was standing right in front of me. As if the only thing that mattered was  _ Juno Steel  _ and the future we were about to start together.”

Buddy thought about when she had seen Vespa that first reunion in that bar she ran. That flash of green hair, the fear in those eyes, the blood on her hands. Any sense of logic in her mind had fallen out the window after she had seen that ghost. Her life was… shifted, and so was every priority she had ever had. It was as if there was a spotlight of her newfound purpose after she had been searching for fifteen years. As if the only thing that mattered was Vespa Ilkay and the future they were going to restart together. “You planned to start a future together?”

“It was all very sudden, I think, for him. I could see it on his face as well, so I asked him several times if he was okay with abandoning everything. With starting this future and every time he said yes,” Ransom looked down at the floor. “I shouldn’t have believed him. It might have… hurt less, if I had prepared myself. Perhaps, it was foolish for me to go to that hotel room, to sleep with him, to confess my love to him so earnestly. I admitted it was foolish of me to have fallen in love with him, Captain, but do you know what he said?”

“What was that that he said, Pete?” Buddy felt her heart ache, seeing such solemn vulnerability from Ransom. It occurred to her that this was the most she had ever heard him say.

“He said, if you’re a fool, then that made two of us,” his laughter is painted with strokes of heartbreak. Peter was embarrassed of his own heart, and Buddy knew this well. “I had never felt so… euphoric. I knew that no drug I could ever do, no thrill I could ever seek, would ever compare to Juno Steel falling in love with me. That night I spent with him, when I thought my future was going to be exploring the stars with  _ him  _ and nothing else… I had never allowed myself to feel so happy.”

“Oh, it felt very much the same with Vespa,” her sigh this time was a recollection of a pleasant memory, though her face fell as the heartbreak settled back in. “The first time she admitted she loved me it felt as if I could have done anything at that moment, but all I wanted to do was kiss her and never stop. I wanted to live in that happiness forever, much like you did with Juno. The only difference is I got to taste much more of that future than you did before…”

Her chest grew tighter again. She could picture Ransom’s heart breaking in an exact mirror image to her own. The sadness in both of their eyes were like reflections of the other. He waved his hand, as if to signal that it was okay for her to finish the sentence. To state the obvious.

“Before he left,” Buddy looked blankly at some unknown point on the wall.. “You went through so much and had been willing to do  _ so  _ much to be able to be happy together… and then he left in the middle of the night.”

“Yes,” Ransom cleared his throat. “He assumed I was sleeping, but he had woken me up. Juno is a very… warm person and I had felt all that warmth sapped away, followed by footsteps I had pretended not to hear and a door I wish I had never heard open. I remember that night quite vividly, Captain. I had never felt so cold before. It was as if my entire body turned to ice and I wanted nothing more than for him to come back into bed and warm it.”

“I heard Vespa leaving,” her voice was monotone. She was too tired to muster up genuine sadness. “I thought she was sneaking off to take some alone time, but I wish I had stopped her. Or said something. Instead, I just…”

“Let her go,” Ransom finished her sentence for her. “I understand that regret quite well too, Captain.”

“Tell me, Pete,” Buddy looked up at him. “How… how did you handle it?” she was desperate for advice, for something that would make her heart ache less. Some coping mechanism that would make her stop feeling like she was dying, that would loosen the tightness that persisted in her chest, that would untie the knots in her gut.

“Poorly,” he answered. “I will not sugarcoat it for you, Captain, as I have promised you honestly. I was much more of a mess than I would ever care to be. I sat in that hotel room and sobbed. My face was a horrid, ugly thing to see at that time but I couldn’t stop. I stopped eating. I became obsessed with every flaw I had ever had thinking perhaps if I fixed them, Juno would come back to me. It was… unhealthy, the way my self-image twisted. I had relapsed on a disorder for which I had been in recovery for years. Not  _ just  _ because of Juno, mind you, but it certainly didn’t help the insecurities. I kept extensive tabs on him and where he was, what he was doing for a bit. I’m… not proud of it, but every time I saw an update about  _ Detective Steel,  _ I read it obsessively. One time the mayor of Hyperion had declared him missing, and I felt like I was going to die. But, I tried to let the time pass and I would research him less, but it still hurt. I was still hurt and searching, blindly, for something that would bring me some sense of… joy or purpose. But that ache never really left.”

Buddy grimaced. That didn’t bear good news for her. Ransom didn’t seem to really know how to get rid of that pain; he just knew what it felt like. Perhaps, for now, that could be enough for Buddy. To have someone who could understand. She let out a deep breath. “So, you never really found something that helped? I sensed a lot of hostility between you and Juno when he first boarded. Mostly from you to him. He, on the other hand, looked highly ashamed as if he was a child who had just received a horrible scolding. It looked as if you  _ hated  _ him, quite frankly.”

“That was the problem, Captain, is that I didn’t, even though I wanted to convince myself that I did,” Ransom placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Much like how I know you cannot bring yourself to hate Vespa. You and Vespa have a much longer and more complex history than Juno and I, so I can only imagine how deep this wounds you. I was angry with Juno eventually.  _ Furious _ even, and then irked by his incessant need to discuss what happened when, frankly, all I wanted was to file that embarrassment away. You say I never found something that helped which, I suppose at that time, is true. But you have something I never did, Captain.”

“And what is that exactly?”

“A family to help you through it.”

His answer was simple and perhaps cliche, but it made Buddy’s heart swell with emotions she had been trying to shove down. She didn’t  _ mean  _ to cry in front of Ransom, but it was impossible to contain her sobs at that moment.

Ransom awkwardly rubbed her back, trying to soothe her. “Vespa couldn’t have gone far, Captain. We can find her. You don’t have to solve this alone, you know. That’s a lesson I have been trying to teach myself recently. And it’s one you know quite well, actually, yet you insist on not taking your own advice.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and spoke, her voice clear, save for the occasional sniffle. “I didn’t mean to break down in front of you, Ransom. I hope this does not diminish your respect for me as a Captain. I thank you for your comfort. It does feel a little better knowing that I have someone who, though our circumstances are  _ not  _ the same, can somewhat understand my current emotional process. I suppose we must all work together in order to find Vespa. I shall call another meeting in an hour to brainstorm strategies on how to locate her.”

“Very well. I shall tell the others,” he rose from the bed and was about to head out. “By the way, Captain?”

“Yes, Pete?” Buddy tilted her head.

“I find it always hurt more to stop myself from crying than to just suck it up and cry, as ugly as the expression may be,” he told her. “You don’t need to compose yourself so immediately. This ship is full of repressed emotions, mostly from myself, but that filing cabinet in your mind can fill up quite quickly. I should know, after all.”

“I will take your advice into consideration,” she straightened her posture. “Now, please go tell the others about the meeting. We cannot afford to waste time.”

“See you in an hour, Captain,” Ransom said before shutting the door behind him.

Now, Buddy was all alone. She didn’t know how to process the storm of emotions she was feeling. It was… comforting, at least a little, to hear Ransom speak, but her whole body felt overwhelmed with dull pain. It weighed heavily on her, inducing lethargy and apathy. She wanted to cry again, like she did in front of Ransom not moments ago, but it was difficult. She had an hour to kill before the meeting. She pulled out Vespa’s comms again, tempted to listen to the message over and over like she had been doing for hours. She hovered over the play button, and set it down.

The oddest thing about heartbreak, to Buddy, was the name. A heart was a muscle, unable to be broken. It could tear and rip and be punctured, yes, but not  _ broken _ like a rib or a femur. Yet, it felt so perfect in its description, like it was a glass sculpture falling to millions of pieces scattered on a gallery floor. Any breath from the lungs could puncture them on the shards. When she was alone, like she had been for approximately 36 hours prior, that feeling washed over her. It mingled with other things, embarrassment and shame for showing such weakness to her crew members. When that emotion, that  _ horror  _ at the fact that she had cried in front of Ransom snuck in, she remembered what he had said, an echo of her own words that she had repeated so many times.  _ Family. Family. Family. _

It was true, yes, that Buddy Aurinko was the foundation upon which the family rested. It was also true, yes, that a cracked foundation made the entire ordeal structurally insecure. However, hiding the cracks would only cause more damage in the long run. They all knew she was struggling, that grief overwhelmed her. They had seen her confined to her bed. It was no longer a plausible option for Buddy Aurinko to hide the cracks. She just had to trust the others to try their damnedest to help her fix things. And, now, she knew one thing she had not known before, an element that she had been missing.

She had complete faith and a damn good confidant in Peter Ransom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No consistent chapter lengths we die like men.


	4. I Pray You Don't Really Mean It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buddy is... stressed about losing Vespa. The emotional heights the trauma is bringing her causes her to lash out at Juno who... really doesn't deserve this.

Buddy tried to ignore that odd, dull aching in her chest that had made itself home as she conducted the next family meeting. She had grieved before, for the same woman no less, surely this familiar aching could  _ wait  _ until she was done saying what she needed to say.

“As we all know, Vespa is still missing,” her voice quivered a bit as she spoke, but maybe it wasn’t so bad to show them a  _ little  _ bit of heartache. Hell, it might have served as… motivation. “Well,  _ hiding  _ from us is a better way to put it. After running, she’s likely to have hid herself somewhere in the forest. She knows we’re being tracked, and that includes her. It’s likely to be damn near impossible to find her. Hell, it would be impossible if we were anyone else other than who we currently are.”

“What about whoever’s trying to track us down? They seem pretty fucking determined,” Juno commented, and Buddy felt annoyance surge through her.

“Language, Juno!” she chastised. “Must you have such a  _ foul  _ tongue today?”

“You literally just said damn a sentence before me!” he protested. He could be such a petulant child sometimes, she thought to herself. Immature and inexperienced and always a  _ bit  _ too willing to pick a fight.

“Silence! Unless you have anything useful to say, I suggest you  _ not say anything at all,  _ okay?” she took a deep breath. “But you do bring up a fair point, I will admit. We are being tracked, and they’re likely to go after her as well. I suspect that Vespa, alone, is less likely to be caught than all of us in a larger group. I know she took several of her knives before leaving, so she isn’t defenseless. However, we still should try to find her  _ as soon as possible,  _ do you understand? I am… open to ideas from the rest of you should you have an idea of how to find her.”

Rita enthusiastically raised her hand, to which Buddy motioned to her, indicating the other woman’s permission to speak. “Thank you, Miss Captain Buddy, so I’ve been thinkin about this since our first meeting yestaday, where you first said she was missin, and I was thinkin to myself  _ oh god how are we gonna find her that’s impossible  _ but THEN I realized it  _ is  _ impossible for anyone who isn’t RITA!” Buddy raised her brow in curiosity and told her to go on. “Alright, so, I was thinkin  _ how do you find someone who really doesn’t wanna be found  _ and I realized that Miss Vespa still has that little, uh, bracelet thingy around her wrist that she had from when she was… well… yanno what I mean.”

“Her debtor’s tag,” Buddy clarified, and a familiar spark ignited itself in her hazel eyes. “Rita, you’re a genius. Do you think you could track her location on it?”

“Well, yes, Miss Captain Buddy,” she knitted her brows together. “But that brings up a  _ different _ problem.”

“Whoever’s been hunting us down could have been using  _ Vespa  _ to do it,” Juno’s comment filled Buddy with indignance and another, equally unpleasant but much harder to describe, emotion swirling in her gut.

“Oh, wouldn’t that be  _ wonderfully  _ convenient, Juno?” she snapped. “They’ll find Vespa and torture her for information on the rest of us and our whereabouts, but she won’t budge so they’ll  _ kill  _ her and we save our skins, don’t we?”

“That isn’t what I was saying, Buddy,” he sounded overly-defensive once more. “I’m saying that your hopes she’s less likely to get caught  _ might  _ not—”

“Do you not think I am  _ painfully  _ aware of that fact? Like I said, if you have nothing useful to say, you’re much better off  _ not saying anything at all.  _ Or have you forgotten a command not even ten minutes old?”

“What the fuck did I do?” Juno growled like a scared dog backed into a corner. He growled like Vespa. “I didn’t even  _ say  _ anything wrong. I was pointing out a potential issue dealing with  _ your  _ wife and you look like you’re ready to rip my fucking head off.”

“Language, Juno!”

“I’ll put another fucking few creds in the swear jar, whatever, you’re just not being  _ fair  _ to me!” his voice cracked at the end of his sentence. “Did I  _ do  _ something to piss you off?”

Buddy saw what looked like genuine  _ hurt  _ in Juno’s eye and, perhaps, just a little bit of fear. And she felt her body turn to stone. “No,” she said, confused. “Not at the present moment.”

“Well,” his voice was cold, but laced with an apprehensive aggression. He wasn’t angry, he was  _ guarded.  _ Buddy swore his face could mirror Vespa’s expressions perfectly. “Thanks, but if I wanted to be used as a  _ scapegoat,  _ I would have continued to stay with Sarah.”

“I— Juno,” Buddy sighed, and decided it would be best for her to… keep her distance for a bit. “I… I’m sorry. The meeting is adjourned. Rita, track Vespa. Let me know when you get the results. You’re all dismissed.”

“That wasn’t like you at all, Captain,” Ransom had waited until the other members of the Carte Blanche had dispersed, even though Jet seemed like he was  _ also  _ waiting to talk to Buddy. “Is everything alright?”

“I don’t know at the moment, Ransom,” she sighed, tracing her fingers along the edge of the kitchen chair she found herself unable to sit down in. “I… I was quite cruel to Juno for little reason. It’s odd, truly, how much his expressions and words mimic my Vespa’s. It had caught me off guard.”

“You’re projecting the hurt you’re struggling to feel about your Vespa leaving you onto  _ my  _ Juno,” he pointed out. His voice was calm and patient, well rehearsed. This was Ransom through and through, but part of Buddy wanted to talk to whoever the man she talked to earlier that day was. That man who had exposed his wounds and let Buddy be vulnerable. “I suppose that my… own story couldn’t have helped that projection any more. You’re likely to feel angry towards Detective Steel because you cannot express anger towards Vespa at the moment because she isn’t here to do so. He’s someone who, as you said, is very similar and has hurt someone in a similar way. It makes it quite easy to project.”

Buddy felt her cheeks grow hot with shame. “You’re right, Pete. It was… odd, how much even the simplest of words from him made me tick. It isn’t the most professional course of action, I admit. I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior from any of you, let alone a Captain.”

“Juno is also a… delicate man sometimes,” he explained. “He doesn’t like to show it— that lady is as stubborn and prideful as the Venusian day is long sometimes, I swear— but such… unprompted aggression can be… unsettling for him. Especially from someone he views as a sort of maternal figure.”

“He views me as a maternal figure?” she would be honored by that, if every inch of her body wasn’t being consumed by guilt.

“Ah, let’s keep that a secret between us, hmm?” Ransom gave a small smile. “I would recommend that you  _ do  _ apologize. He’s more accepting of those of recent. I am going to speak with him first, see just  _ how  _ upset he is. Calm him down if need be.”

“That’s a good idea, Ransom. You care for him. I don’t want to keep you here talking about my guilt any longer,” Buddy folded her arms across her chest, her shoulders slinking in a bit. “I’ll talk to Juno later.”

“Captain?” he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I care for you too, you know. I understand your anger, and this hurt you are feeling. I would just suggest you be more careful with where you’re shooting. We are a family after all.”

“Using my own words against me?” she scoffed, though the ghost of smile crept upon her lips. “Go take care of Juno, I’ll talk to him after I talk with Rita. She should have found Vespa’s location by now.”

“I wish you luck, Captain,” he said before he disappeared down the hallway and into Juno’s bedroom.

When Buddy entered the computer room, Rita was in the center, looking at about five different screens at once. One of them played some silly crime stream that she knew the woman would ramble about for a bit too long if Buddy dared ask about it. Instead, she took a deep breath, weirdly anxious about speaking. Rita was close to Juno, would she be upset with her for snapping at him so cruelly? Did she lose her respect?

Buddy wasn’t used to feeling like this: small and anxious and afraid. She had only  _ very  _ rarely doubted her actions, yet she second-guessed every step she took in the past two days. Her chest still flared up in moments where she felt she couldn’t breathe, only crumple to her feet and sob into her hands. It would go away eventually, wouldn’t it? When they found Vespa, it would all be okay. They just had to  _ find  _ her.

After about a minute of silently lurking in the doorway with trembling hands, Buddy cleared her throat, not making eye contact. That weird pit of anxiety swirled and danced, but she tried to shake it off. “Rita? How’s… how’s your progress going?”

“Okay, so I have good news and bad news, right?” she turned around to face her with a bright, albeit nervous smile. “Don’t shoot the messenger, here, but I don’t think we’re the  _ only  _ people hunting down Miss Vespa because when I found the database for all of those debtor tag things, I  _ did  _ see that they have a little tracking chip there so the people who, ugh,  _ own  _ them can find them if they run off, gosh, it feels so  _ icky  _ to talk about a living person like that, yanno? Anyway, so you  _ can  _ track them all with a passcode and proof of ownership and blahblahblah easy as dirt to hack into if you know who you’re looking for.”

“Which bodes both well and horribly for us,” she let out a long sigh. “But you found her is what you’re saying?”

“Yes, and I tried to code some extra protocols and barriers so no one else can track her as easily,  _ but  _ I worry it might be too late because if anyone has been actively lookin for us, they already have a pretty clear sense of her location  _ and  _ now they know we know they’re lookin for us and how and it tends to make bad guys  _ real  _ mad when you know what they’re doin.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she digs her nails into her arm, that dreadful feeling swarming like angered hornets throughout her body. “That just means we shall have to find her first, doesn’t it? Where is she?”

“Well, if you look here,” she points at a little pulsing dot on the screen. “This little dot here is Miss Vespa. She’s made a pretty decent amount of distance from us, especially considering I’m pretty sure she’s just on foot. So, I looked at these coordinates, and she’s gotten herself pretty deep in the forest. Like, I was looking on one of those little satellite maps, and it’s  _ all  _ trees. Like, with  _ wood  _ and leaves and everything.”

“Yes, this planet seems to have an abundance of resources. I’m surprised it hasn’t been completely destroyed yet,” Buddy pointed out. “But, I suppose they must have learned by now that you cannot harvest an entire forest at once. It needs to be able to grow back. Regardless, keep an eye on Vespa. I’ll need to come up with a plan to extract her and quickly.”

“There is  _ one  _ more, eensy,  _ teensy  _ little thing I should add, Miss Buddy,” Rita winced before she continued. “I think I  _ might  _ have an idea on who’s been followin us because they put up their  _ own  _ defense against other people tryin to find Miss Vespa and it was  _ real  _ annoying to get by, and I’ve only seen coding like that a coupla times and I would recognize that maskin any—”

“Who do you think it is, Rita?”

“You’re  _ really _ not gonna like this, Miss Captain Buddy, so  _ please  _ don’t shoot the messenger because I really like this job, but,” she let out a little whine, reluctant to say it. “Dark Matters!”

“Ah,” Buddy pursed her lips. “You’re right, Rita. I really  _ don’t  _ like that news. The fact that Dark Matters is trying to find us means one thing and one thing only: they’ve discovered  _ exactly  _ what we’re trying to do.”

Buddy closed her eyes and saw a face she hadn’t really thought of in years. A man with warm brown skin, a kind smile, and a fire in his hazel eyes that matched hers perfectly. Dark Matters had destroyed Pallas Aurinko without a trace. Without a body to bury. It was as if her father and his legacy had never existed in the first place. The thought of the same thing happening to Vespa made her nauseous. Her knees felt too shaky to stand without support. She clutched her cane to keep her up.

Then, she remembered all of Vespa’s insecurities, whispered and shouted with each word slicing directly into Buddy’s heart. Vespa felt like a liability, a burden, a danger to the group as a whole. And, though Buddy hated to admit it, she was right, in a way. Just not the way she had thought previously. When they found Vespa again, Buddy would keep that detail from her. It would just prevent her from coming back.

“If it’s any consolation, Miss Captain Buddy,” Rita piped up again. “I ain’t  _ entirely  _ sure if Dark Matters could find us exactly when we were on the ship because of all the jammers I put up. They can only get an approximate range of coordinates, and then an area where any trackin signals go dead or get rerouted to proxies all over the galaxy!  _ But,  _ I know Dark Matters has a lot of weird technology, so I don’t exactly know how close they can get to it. But, if they could get to us as easily as I can get to Vespa, they woulda caught us ages ago, yanno?”

“I suppose you’re right,” Buddy tried to steady her breathing. “I need to think of a plan to find her and get her to come home. Thank you, Rita.”

She placed a kiss on her forehead and, for a moment, debated whether or not medical intervention was needed with the way Rita flushed every shade of deep scarlet she could fathom. “Um, also, Miss, uh, Miss Captain Buddy, I  _ hate  _ to ruin a good moment like this,  _ but,  _ uh, are you goin to talk to Mista Steel? I just know you had that argument and it just  _ really  _ hurts my heart to see him get so sad and scared like that and I know you didn’t mean it because I  _ also  _ know you’re sad and scared but I just think that maybe you two co—”

“I was planning on talking to Juno when Ransom was done consoling him,” she explained. “As the captain here, I know when I need to repair the wounds I’ve caused. I… apologize if I seem unprofessional, Rita. This has just placed a lot of strain on me.”

“Oh, I understand, Miss Buddy,” Rita shot her another one of those radiant smiles. “Mista Steel has yelled a  _ lot  _ worse over a lot more minor things. And I ain’t ever thought of him as anything other than a professional.”

“Thank you, Rita.”

Buddy stood outside of Juno’s door for a bit, trying to muster up the courage to knock. Perhaps she wasn’t fumbling for courage, but rather the  _ energy  _ to knock. It required a certain… drive that she struggled to find. It was hard for her to really do anything. Not when that sluggish weight tugged at her limbs and urged her to just sink into the bed again, to merge her skin with its fibers. To never leave it. To pine and waste away to nothing, like Echo for Narcissus. But nothing would get done if she allowed herself to waste away, no matter how  _ terribly  _ she wanted to.

So she knocked on his door. “Juno, it’s Buddy. May I come in? I… I want to talk to you about earlier.”

Ransom opened the door and made his exit, but not before whispering in Buddy’s ear  _ “He’s willing to talk, but sensitive. Do be careful.”  _

Buddy lurked in the doorway, waiting for Juno to give her permission to enter. It was a few seconds that felt stretched out into hours before Juno looked up at her and groaned.

“Aren’t you the captain of this whole thing? You don’t need my permission to come in,” his voice is sharp and decidedly mean. Juno had covered himself in invisible spikes: dangerous and wholly covering the fact that he was, in all honesty, just pleading for Buddy not to hurt him.

“It’s your room, Juno,” she replied, keeping her voice calm and kind. She no longer wanted to pose a threat. “I would like your permission before I enter your space. I know how… precious something like that can be: the safety of having a space no one else can enter without permission. So, may I come in? You’re allowed to say no.”

Juno sneered at her, before his face dropped to a much… gentler expression. “Yeah, you can come in, but only if you’re not going to yell at me.”

“I won’t,” she took a deep breath and walked into the room. “I… I shouldn’t have been so cross with you, Juno. There was no real reason for it besides me letting my own emotions leak out into places they don’t belong. You are not Vespa, I should not be projecting my current attitude toward her onto you or anyone else.”

Juno stayed silent for a bit, his gaze still fixed firmly to the floor. He folded in on himself and let out a deep sigh. “It wasn’t anyone else though. It was me. Why was it  _ me  _ though, Buddy? I… Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” her voice fizzled out at that word. In a way, he  _ had,  _ but not to her. It wasn’t his fault that he mirrored Vespa so much, and it wasn’t her fault she saw herself so much in the man that Ransom really was.

She could see his trembling a bit, and his attempts to calm himself down. And that guilty knife twisted itself in her abdomen once more. Another sigh came from Juno. “You… Ransom told you about us. And our history. How I walked out on him like Vespa walked out on you. It’s— it’s something we’re working on, I promise, I would never—”

“Juno,” Buddy felt her chest swell with pain as she listened to him speak. He genuinely thought she was mad at him, and it broke her heart. “You do not need to apologize to me for your history with Peter Ransom. I know you’re a different lady than you were back then. And, even if you weren’t, it doesn’t concern me. I can see all of that baggage weighing heavily on your shoulders and it’s been there since I first saw you. I don’t condemn people for their past actions.”

“But you  _ did,  _ Buddy,” that guard was back up, but she watched him slowly lower it. “Listen, I  _ get  _ getting reprimanded when I fuck up, okay? I just… I don’t like getting yelled at,  _ especially  _ when I don’t know what I did. It… it just messes up my mindset, I guess.”

“I truly am sorry, Juno,” Buddy looked at him and they made eye contact. She took in all the emotions in his expression: the sadness and fear and anxiety. “I hope this doesn’t damage our relationship too horribly. I… I haven’t been myself these past few days, I’m well aware, and I’m trying to  _ fix  _ it, but it’s terribly difficult to be a good captain when it feels like you’re slowly dying.”

“I had a fiance walk out on me once,” Juno admitted. Buddy saw his muscles begin to relax. “I mean, I guess it was a blessing in disguise. That relationship was… well, bad is putting it lightly. But when they walked out on me, it felt like my life was over. I wasn’t worth sticking around for. It…  _ sucked.  _ I think my liver is still filtering all the shit I put in my body afterwards. After it, though, I got  _ real  _ mean. Like,  _ really  _ mean. I’m surprised Rita and Mick stuck around, honestly. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is I  _ get  _ it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”

“I suppose I’m not drinking myself into a stupor, though I have felt  _ awfully  _ tempted if I didn’t worry it would kill me, so I have that going for me,” she let out a tiny laugh. “I shall try not to snap at you unless you  _ truly  _ manage to screw up royally. But, I have more faith in you than that, Juno Steel.”

“Thanks, mom,” the last word was drawn out as a reaction to her giving him a short and sweet pat on the head. A smile flickered on his face. Ransom was right; he  _ did  _ have a beautiful smile. The kind you hoped would last forever, but knew would only last a moment.

“You say it so jokingly, but I know the truth,” she teased him, causing him to give her an immensely quizzical look. “Do you view me as a positive maternal figure, Juno?”

“No,” he scoffed. The lie was clearly read on his face. “That’s ridiculous. Where would you get that idea from? Was it Ransom? Did Ransom tell you? God, I’ll kill—”

“You know, for a thief, you make a terrible liar,” she ruffled his hair. “Rita managed to locate Vespa. I’m calling a meeting in twenty minutes where we’ll devise a plan to find her and bring her back.”

“So, there  _ is  _ a tracker in the debtor’s tag,” Juno nodded.

“Yes, and we aren’t the only ones who know about it, so time is of the utmost importance. I’ll see you in twenty minutes,” she flashed a bright smile and laughed before adding on. “Son.”

“Shut up!” Juno huffed and tossed a tiny pillow in her direction, which she caught quite easily.

“Good aim, Juno. Glad to know our one-eye shooting lessons are going quite well,” she winked, though she knew it might not have registered as one, given the whole one-eye deal.

“Hey, Buddy?”

“Yes?”

Juno paused for a bit before he spoke, trepidation leaking out of every pore, clearly visible in his body language. “What are you planning to do if Vespa doesn’t, uh, want to come back?”

That question hit Buddy like a laser, burning and sharp. Of course, it wasn’t something she hadn’t thought of. On the contrary, Juno had vocalized the very thought that kept slithering unwanted into her brain.  _ What if Vespa doesn’t want to come back? What if she never comes back?  _ She had thought it, well, approximately two-hundred times in the past forty hours. Every time the thought entered her stream of consciousness, like an invasive species determined to wipe out the population of other thoughts in her head, she always tried to shake it off and think of something else. It rarely worked. Instead, it lingered and whispered  _ cruel  _ taunts in her ears. It made her envision the last time she had seen Vespa and told her to cling onto that memory, for it would be the last image she would ever receive. It made Buddy aware of every single ache and pain in her body, physical and emotional. What if Vespa didn’t want to come back?

“I don’t know, Juno,” she sounded like she had just had the wind knocked out of her. Perhaps she had. “We shall get there when we get there, I suppose.”

_ That  _ was unlike her more than anything else. Buddy Aurinko always had a plan, and a backup. She was prepared for any kind of crisis that may have arisen. It was what made her such an excellent thief, after all, that cunning ability to be able to envision a wide range of routes branching off like neural pathways, and to be able to solve the problem for every single twist and turn. “ _ I don’t know”  _ was a shunned phrase in her vocabulary, her mother had made quite sure of it. Buddy Aurinko  _ always  _ knew, always  _ had  _ to know because, if she didn’t, the world would fall apart at its seams. If she didn’t know, everything she loved would slip right through her and disappear, like sand between her fingertips. Yet, here she was: leaning on those words like a railing, embracing them the same way she embraced a universe that tried its hardest to kill her and kill Vespa and failed. She fumbled for other answers and was left with nothing but nebulous uncertainty. Oh, she  _ searched  _ for an answer to this question desperately, for her own sake and everyone else. What is going to happen if Vespa doesn’t want me? If she doesn’t want this? She would dive into the depths of her mind, sorting through meaningless gray matter looking for  _ some  _ response, but all she found was more uncertainty, more anxiety, more images of her lying motionless in a bed unable to think or move and hardly able to breathe. What would happen if she lost Vespa forever?

“I… I don’t know,” Buddy Aurinko sounded scared and vulnerable and far more mortal than she had ever liked to make herself out to be. “I don’t know.”

And that answer had to be good enough for Buddy Aurinko. There was no other choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buddy's dad being named Pallas comes from captain_aurinko's very good aurilkay backstory fic pls read it


	5. How Can I Convince You Not to Stay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buddy has devised a plan to get Vespa back, but, oh, both of those women are too damn stubborn for their own good.

Fatigue tore at every bit of Buddy’s body. The fact that she hadn’t slept in almost two days was becoming abundantly clear as each limb seemed to weigh more and more as every second passed. But, she couldn’t afford to let herself sleep, not now anyway. When Vespa was still out there and being tracked by Dark Matters. Now that they  _ knew  _ she was being tracked. To be completely fair, Buddy didn’t even think she could sleep if she tried, not when anxiety ate away at her insides.

There was another meeting. She wondered, partially, if this excess of conversation and organized meeting annoyed the other four members. It wasn’t as if the meetings were pointless, there were gravely important matters to discuss, but she could see how the others seemed stressed as well. Though some of them had well-rested eyes, they were all tense and neurotically waiting for their next set of directions.

Like she had been doing with every other decision and word that came from her mouth since Vespa left, Buddy was unsure of whether or not her plan would work. She told herself it would work, but she knew it was only due to the fact that her mind would be unable to process anything if it didn’t. Perhaps that would be the thing to kill her. It was odd, really, Buddy had rarely envisioned her dying even with all of the times she had danced with death and danger. They were risks, but ones that seemed unlikely to touch her; she was too good. That had changed in the past couple of hours as well.

“Thanks to Rita, we have managed to get a precise location. We know exactly where Vespa is and can see exactly where she is going. She’s deep in this forest somewhere. She’s immensely paranoid and armed,” Buddy took a deep breath before she continued. “I have to reason to suspect any of us are in danger.”

“So, that’s it, then?” Ransom chirped in. “Follow where her tracker is going and then bring her back? It seems simple enough.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Buddy drummed her fingers against the table. “And it very much  _ could  _ be, save for the fact that Rita has a pretty solid idea of who our mysterious bounty hunters are and it’s not… good news.”

“Yeah, Dark Matters seems to  _ really  _ be on the search for us and it’s real wild. They put up a bunch of firewalls and blockades around Miss Vespa’s tracker, but I was able to get past them and lock them out of trackin her. For now, at least.  _ But  _ that does mean they know we know that they’re lookin for us and that  _ might  _ spell trouble. It’s like one of those streams where—”

“Thank you, Rita,” Buddy stopped her from going on another one of her tangents. “But Dark Matters being on our tail spells out  _ very  _ bad news, as you can understand. They aren’t friendly and they aren’t very  _ keen  _ on bargaining. Likely, they know we’re after the Curemother Prime and are determined to stop us.”

“I disagree,” Juno chimed in. “I’m  _ pretty  _ familiar with Dark Matters bullshit. Well, at least a little familiar. But familiar enough to know that if they  _ just  _ wanted to stop us, they would kill us. And they’ve had the opportunity to. They’re specifically trying to catch us  _ alive,  _ is the thing.”

“They might want information about the Curemother Prime from us before they kill us,” Jet spoke without a great deal of inflection in his tone, as was normal for him. It still made Buddy feel queasy.

“Since they are tracking us through Vespa, and they have no indication that she is not with the rest of us, this places her in the most danger,” she continued. “However, it is  _ imperative _ that when we find her, we  _ do not  _ mention the fact that we are being tracked via her debtor’s tag. If any of you breathe a  _ word  _ of it to her, you won’t have to worry about Dark Matters agents scrubbing your existence from this universe, got it?”

Her tone was firm and, perhaps, just a touch scary judging from the widened eyes of the crew. But each of them nodded and gave a “Yes, Captain” before they carried on discussing plans.

“Juno, I  _ know _ you and Vespa don’t get along, but I trust your ability to navigate any… sticky situations we may come across. You’ll be coming with me on this mission when we travel on foot. However, she’s quick. We won’t be able to catch up to her on foot. Which means we need another mode of transportation.”

“The Ruby 7 is able to adapt to driving in such a densely wooded forest. In addition, it will automatically take you right to where Vespa’s tracker is,” Jet added.

“Precisely,” Buddy replied. “We take the Ruby 7, extract Vespa, and then we can all work out how to handle Dark Matters once she’s home.”

“It sounds… too simple,” Juno’s brows furrowed. “Like, nothing is  _ ever  _ that simple, Buddy. There’s gotta be some… catch.”

“Sometimes a simple plan is the best one, Juno,” she sounded more defensive than she needed to be. “I imagine the most difficult part of this whole ordeal is going to be wrangling Vespa, to be quite honest. She’s a stubborn woman; she has been since the day we met. Such… strong will endangers her.”

“What do you mean, Captain?” Ransom cocked a brow.

“Vespa made a decision to leave,” every word felt like an added weight to the boulder she was trying to push. “And it’s… difficult, to say the least, to get her to go back on a decision. She doesn’t like to change her mind, even if she realizes she was wrong. The  _ arguments  _ we would get into when we were both much younger and much more hot-headed could be vicious, all for the sole reason that neither of us wished to change our mind about the topic. Sometimes, arguing with her felt futile. But, we have to try.”

This whole mission, much to her concern, felt Sisyphean in nature. Buddy would spend eternity pushing for a future with Vespa and, just when she reached the point where it became  _ real  _ and wonderful, everything fell apart. Vespa disappeared, and Buddy sank back to rock bottom. She wondered how many times the titan had to watch his toils lead to nothing but disappointment and wasted effort before he realized it was a futile task. She wondered what he did after he had come to that conclusion.

Jet spoke next. “So, you would like you, Juno, and I to take the Ruby 7 into the forest to retrieve Vespa. This is a good plan, Captain; however, I would recommend that you get some sleep before we head out. There is a moderate chance of danger and your lack of sleep worsens your chronic pain. You’re very stiff right now. Every movement is causing you pain.”

“Thank you for that input, Jet,” Buddy sat down wincing. “I’m afraid we cannot risk wasting the time necessary for me to sleep. Dark Matters surely isn’t sleeping, so surely  _ I  _ cannot afford to until we have her back safe.”

Jet opened his mouth, said nothing, and shut it. He opened it once more, only to say a single sentence. “You know I took it on as my job to care about you when you forget to do it yourself.”

Jet’s words caused Buddy’s vision to go blurry with tears, which she tried not to let spill in front of everyone. Her mind traveled back years, when Jet would pull her away from frying in the Martian sun on the lighthouse. He  _ knew  _ the lengths she would go to to bring Vespa back to her, how her self-preservation seemed to disappear whenever she thought about that soft, green hair and those beautiful, dark eyes. She would have let herself waste away in the Martian desert, body and brain rotten away from the radiation,  _ just  _ in case she saw her. Buddy, typically, was a composed and competent woman, except when it came to her Vespa (always  _ her  _ Vespa, someone she wanted to hold on forever until the two bodies became inseparable— BuddyandVespa, like a single word). When it came to Vespa, Buddy was always too willing to make herself a martyr, to throw self-preservation out the window. Of this, Jet was far too aware, and always willing to make himself the voice of reason in her emotionally driven mind.

“Jet, you  _ know  _ I can’t,” her voice quivered with the tears she was trying to swallow back. “I wouldn’t be able to anyway. Besides, I’ve gone longer without sleep. Two days is  _ nothing  _ for me. What kind of master criminal would I be if I procrastinated on a mission because I was  _ tired.  _ That would be ridiculous.”

Jet let out a sigh, someone Buddy  _ rarely  _ heard him do. God, he must have been so frustrated with her and her insistence on not taking care of herself. Yet, if he harbored any secret annoyance with her, it did not show on his face. Instead, there was a stern look of concern deep in his dark brown eyes. It was a look Buddy knew quite well. The look of  _ you’ve spent eternity baking in radiation, for the love of god  _ **_please_ ** _ come inside, Buddy.  _ Oh, but she was a stubborn one, Buddy Aurinko, and she often failed to listen unless he dragged her out himself.

“I see I cannot stop you,” he said. “I do ask that you be careful. Should we break out into an altercation with Dark Matters—”

“I can handle myself quite well, Jet,” she attempted to reassure him. “I’m not too terribly old and decrepit to the point where I’ve forgotten how to handle myself in a scrappy situation. Besides, I’m hoping we can find her  _ before  _ Dark Matters does, which is why time is of the essence. Rita, keep trying to keep them  _ out  _ of her tracker.”

“Yes, Miss Captain Buddy,” Rita nodded. “They’re gonna have a  _ real  _ tough time getting past any security protocol set by me!”

“That’s the goal,” she gave Rita a wide, confident smile. This plan  _ would  _ work. It  _ had  _ to. And that confidence filled Buddy with determined purpose. Despite the bags under her eyes and the aches in her muscles, she was wide awake. Nothing was going to stop her, not when determination swirled so strongly through every vein and capillary. “Juno, Jet, we’re to head off as soon as possible. I suggest you grab whatever you may need and then meet me on the loading dock. I will not wait for long. Ransom, you keep guard while we’re gone. I’ll call on my comms when we have her.”

“Very well, Captain, I wish you luck,” the smile on his face is decidedly  _ not  _ Peter Ransom, but whoever that other man is— the one who Buddy knew so well without having a name to attach to him; the one who only Juno knew how to properly address.

“Thank you, Pete,” she gave him a nod. She hadn’t noticed how badly her hands were trembling until Ransom gave one of them a reassuring squeeze. He looked at her, not with the pity that she feared so deeply, but with a sense of genuine empathy behind the lenses. Buddy felt her racing heart calm just a bit. “Rita, program the coordinates into the Ruby 7. You should be able to track both our locations and the location of Vespa at once. I’m relying on you two to keep everything intact.”

“Of course, Captain,” another squeeze before he let go of her hand. “I do believe Juno and Jet should be heading to the dock soon. Are you okay with your pain currently?”

“Physically, yes,” she replied. “I’m a little sore, but nothing I cannot manage.”

“And emotionally?”

“Well, I feel like my heart is ready to leap out of my chest with the most  _ intense  _ determination I’ve seen. It’s all quite impressive, actually. I don’t think I’ve felt this nervous since… well, since the last time we reunited. There’s so much  _ anxiety  _ in uncertainty. I hate feeling uncertain about anything. But, it isn’t anything I can’t handle.”

“Of course.”

Buddy headed to the loading dock of the ship. Jet had gotten there before her and, as if on cue, there was that  _ look  _ on his face. Not many people could make Buddy feel small, especially with her above-average height and confidence, but Jet could always manage. At least, he could when he wanted to. Now was, unfortunately, one of those rare moments.

“You know my thoughts on this, Buddy,” he said. “You aren’t being as careful as you normally are. Emotions have clouded your judgement.”

“It isn’t a bad plan, Jet, and you know it. This is the best way to get her home. And you know just as well as I do that I need to be there. She won’t come home if I’m not there to try to convince her.”

“You’re worried she won’t come home at all. I can see it written on your face,” despite his words very clearly showing disapproval, he was prepping the car for the mission.

“Yes, I am,” saying those words released  _ far  _ more emotions than she had been planning to let escape. It was a deep confession, one that she was petrified of saying out loud, for the words would make the possibility far too concrete; however, the words were out and she had no choice but to let them dance in the air. Hot tears trickled down her cheek. She cried silently, not a single sob daring to escape from her mouth. It was quite cinematic, the whole scene: a woman of stature and dignity, silently crying out of nothing but pure fear for the woman she loves more than anything else in the universe. Jet brought her into a hug, and Buddy shook like a leaf. “I’m  _ petrified,  _ Jet.”

He ran a large, calloused hand through her curls. “I know. I said that. I do not know Vespa well enough to say whether or not she will come back. But, I do know that she loves you more than anything else and that she cannot stand seeing you in pain. This is what caused her to leave in the first place.”

“Am I… interrupting something?” Juno’s voice breaks through the intimate moment. “I don’t want to ruin important friendship bonding between you two. Just figured, you know, we’ve got a whole mission thing to do.”

Buddy wiped the tears from her face. “Thank you for being late as always, Juno. I figured punctuality was more relevant in Hyperion, but I suppose I’ve been wrong before, so I could always be wrong again.”

“Wanted to double check that I didn’t forget anything we might need to escape Dark Matters nonlethally,” he explained. “You know, I don’t know  _ who  _ exactly is on our tail, but I have one  _ tiny  _ fear that I’m really not gonna like if it’s true. I mean, it’s unlikely, but  _ God,  _ is it terrifying.”

They climbed into the Ruby 7 as they continued the conversation. The coordinates of Vespa’s location were already programmed in and Buddy made the mental note to thank Rita next time she saw her. “Who are you afraid of tracking you, Juno? You have a personal connection with Dark Matters, I’m guessing.”

“My childhood best friend,” he sighed. “Well, one of them. The other’s the king of storytelling back down in Oldtown, a real swell guy, if not a bit of a dunce. But  _ Sasha.  _ Well, she’s always been ambitious, Sasha Wire, and now she’s a higher up in Dark Matters, so all that ambition got her  _ somewhere,  _ I guess. It’s just… if they’re tracking us, well, that’s someone who knows me better than almost anyone. Someone who can tell me every one of my weaknesses without a moment’s hesitation. So, I guess that kind of terrifies me.”

“Well, if Dark Matters has all of our names, she would recognize yours. It isn’t unlikely that they would put her on a case where they were trying to track down you and your found family. I understand your fear quite well.”

“Wouldn’t that be quite the reunion, huh? Hey, Sasha, it’s been a hot minute. Remember how I was a PI and then a political pawn? Well, that didn’t work out great so now I’m a criminal, just like you told me I’d always be when we would fight as teenagers,” he let out a stressed laugh.

In the forest, the Ruby 7 drove like nothing any of them had ever seen before. The way it twisted and maneuvered itself through the trees was truly something of spectacle. There was a reason it was the galaxy’s best getaway car, Buddy figured. And this was one of the many, its… knowledge. It had an air of sentience to it, as if its programming could see the world around it in a way that was almost… human. Vespa  _ had  _ made a great deal of distance on foot. She probably only stopped for brief moments of sleep or a  _ potential  _ meal break.

“Once we get relatively close to her, we shall have to search on foot,” she explained. Her heart was racing again. There  _ was  _ just the tiniest, most inconvenient gap in her plans: she had no idea what she was going to tell Vespa when they saw each other again. Part of her was hoping she had already been regretting the decision and would come running into her arms, but the more rational part of her knew nothing in life would ever come that easily. The universe and her were always fighting and often had to come to bitter truces; it was wholly indifferent to her and her whims, but Buddy was always willing to fight anything to get it to care about her: the universe, or Vespa Ilkay.

She had Vespa’s comms with her. She allowed herself to listen to the message again— to hear her voice. And it hurt the same way it did a hundred times before.  _ “Hey, Bud.” _

They were within about 100 yards of her location when the Ruby 7 stopped. By all means, the woman  _ should  _ have been visible, but there was nothing there, at least on the ground. “Spread out. If either of you find her, page me on my comms. Look up in the trees, she might have climbed one.”

Juno and Jet nodded, heading their own separate ways. Buddy continued walking forward, searching for any sign of her. She wanted to call out  _ so  _ desperately, to let Vespa’s name travel on the wind, but logic and reason told her all that that would only drive her away. Then, she saw it. Mostly concealed by bracken and stones: a tiny dent in a cliffside. A den of some sort. Buddy removed a stone, and a knife came from the hole. She dodged it, and it landed in the tree.

“Vespa,” her voice wavered. “Vespa, it’s  _ me.  _ It’s Buddy.”

There was absolute silence for a moment, and another knife poked through the bracken, though it seemed to be dislodging it, pulling it away. An arm swept out and knocked Buddy to the ground, causing her back to spasm in waves of pain. She bit her lip until it bled to prevent crying out in pain.

“Fuck, Bud,” Vespa’s eyes were wide with fear and palpable guilt. “Fuck, it  _ is  _ you. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I wasn’t trying to do that. Fuck. I thought, well, I thought you were— fuck, I hurt you. Fuck.”

“You can continue swearing later,” Buddy winced as she sat up before she drank in the sight before her. Vespa Ilkay. Her green hair was wild and unkempt, she was littered in fresh scratches. A cut that looked concerningly deep. She was jumpy and paranoid, but  _ god,  _ she was there. She was beautiful. “Who did you think I was?”

“Something that keeps fucking attacking,” she hissed under her breath. “This planet’s got something nasty out for me. In the corner of my eye, I think I keep seeing it take a humanoid shape. But I don’t know if it’s real or…”

“You worry it’s a hallucination,” Buddy told her. “But it’s  _ hurting  _ you, darling, you’re covered in scratches and cuts. Obviously, it isn’t one.”

“Well,  _ duh,  _ but I keep thinking it’s… controlled by something. Like I keep seeing the  _ controller.  _ And I try to shake it off, but it doesn’t work. But it keeps fucking coming back. I don’t know if it’s because I’m crazy, or if that’s what it  _ wants  _ me to think.”

“Well, Vespa, darling, you’re  _ safe  _ now,” Buddy’s smile stood on shaky ground. “We can patch you up on the ship and then we’ll find out what might be—”

“Bud,” Vespa placed a gentle hand on her face. It felt like tender electricity, the feeling of that palm and those fingers stroking her cheek. “I… I can’t.”

“What do you mean?” Buddy felt every atom in her body petrify. Dread spread in places blood was supposed to go and it turned her to stone. Perhaps, instead, glass, waiting for Vespa to break her.

“I… I left for a reason,” she could not look her in the eyes. “God, I told you to get mad at me, to hate me. You weren’t  _ supposed  _ to look for me. You’re putting yourself in danger, Bud. You and the rest of the crew.”

“Don’t be ridicu—”

“How did you find me, huh?” Vespa removed her hand from Buddy’s face and folded her arms, intensely guarded. “I could have been anywhere in this forest, yet you knew  _ exactly _ where to find me.

Buddy could not figure out how to respond, just that she knew she couldn’t tell the truth. Lying to Vespa was impossible though, when she knew all of Buddy’s little tells. Even when she thought she did such an excellent job concealing them. Every word she spoke cut worse than any one of her knives could. Buddy felt her heart sink into her stomach as her fears pieced themselves into reality.

“Your—”

“Don’t say my footsteps, I know I did a damn good job concealing them. I did everything I could to throw you guys off my track, yet you still found me. There’s a tracker built in me, Buddy. I fucking  _ know  _ there is. And don’t you bother lying to me and saying there isn’t. Relationships are built on trust and honesty, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Buddy’s voice was filled with far more bitterness than she intended, but now she was  _ angry.  _ Far more angry than she had allowed herself to feel. “They  _ are _ built on trust and honesty,  _ darling,”  _ she practically spat out the word. “And communication. And running off in the middle of the night, leaving me worried  _ sick  _ about you, letting me run myself ragged with no sleep or comfort or  _ anything  _ for days displays exactly none of those qualities!”

“I  _ know  _ it doesn’t!” Vespa snapped back. “Fuck, Bud, you really think I thought  _ wow this will do wonders for our relationship!  _ Fuck, I left to  _ protect  _ you, okay? You weren’t supposed to come searching for me!”

“I can protect myself, Vespa! I don’t need you to do it for me,” she hissed. “Did you really think I was going to let you run away without a search party? I gave myself radiation poisoning waiting for you to come back when all evidence pointed to the fact that you were  _ dead  _ and you thought I wouldn’t come looking for you? You’re not a fool, Vespa.”

“I was hoping I would piss you off enough that you wouldn’t look! Jesus, Bud! I’m putting that whole crew in danger and you’re so  _ blinded  _ by love that you can’t see it! It’s selfish to cling onto this future when I’m actively endangering you all!”

“Selfish!” Buddy scoffed. “Is it not more selfish to just  _ run away  _ in the middle of the night like a coward? To sneak out of our bed like a runaway bride?”

“I’m not a coward! You  _ know  _ not to call me a fucking coward! I’m a lot of fucking things, Bud, but I’m  _ not  _ a coward,” tears welled up in her eyes. “Just let me  _ go,  _ Bud. Go find what you’re looking for.”

“Vespa, I—” Buddy knew she had crossed a line, but not how to mend the mistakes. “I just… I just want you to come home. Please. It’s… it’s hurt so much having you away.”

“And let Dark Matters use the tracker in my debtor’s tag to find all of us?” Vespa sighed. “I’m not gonna let that happen, Bud. If I’m selfish, so be it. I just… god, I can’t let  _ me  _ be the reason you die.”

“They’re going to find you if you stay out here, at least in the ship we have better defenses,” Buddy’s voice rode on waves of sobs and desperation and pleading. It was rare for Buddy Aurinko to beg, but she would  _ grovel  _ at this woman’s feet to get her to stay. “Please.”

For a moment, Vespa paused and Buddy drank up every emotion pooling in her expression and body language. Regret, guilt, overwhelming  _ love  _ and a fear so poignant and tangible that it made Buddy’s stomach twist. For the first time since she left (and, though that time was only two days, it stretched into centuries of uncertainty), their gazes met for a while. Vespa didn’t immediately look away, and Buddy saw her melt  _ just  _ a bit. There was something about Vespa that was so inexplicably beautiful. It wasn’t the conventional way Buddy was beautiful, with full lips and long lashes and a figure with curves in all the right places. Vespa carried her beauty in the sharp cupid’s bow of her narrow upper lip, the angular cut of her jaw, the way her cheeks always seemed to be dusted with red, the way her smile and every other emotion she wore was just  _ slightly  _ crooked.

But, the gaze couldn’t last forever and Vespa broke it, fixing her eyes on the ground again. “Don’t look at me like that, Bud. Not when I’m trying to disappear.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m the best goddamn thing in the universe. Like I came down on a beam of starlight, like I  _ didn’t  _ just break your heart into a thousand pieces and cast them into the wind,” she growled under her breath, and Buddy heard those sobs she was trying to choke back like strong liquor. “You’re making this harder than it has to be.”

“Did you think I was going to let this be  _ easy  _ for you, Vespa?” Buddy looked flat out indignant. “Did you think that after  _ everything  _ we’ve done, all we’ve sacrificed, I was just going to let you walk away without a problem? You know me, darling, I’m far too stubborn.”

“I know you’re stubborn,” she grumbled. “I always found it annoying because what are the fucking odds I’ve found the one woman in the galaxy who’s as  _ persistently  _ bull-headed as I am?”

“Destiny, my love,” Buddy reached out for her hands, but Vespa pulled away. She tried to conceal the way that simple action caused a ripple of pain to spread through her. “Or, the universe’s greatest coincidence. But the hopeless romantic in me likes to think it was the former.”

“Bud…” Vespa tugged at the bracelet on her wrist. “I  _ wish  _ you would stop with all of this sappy stuff. We can’t do this forever and you know it.”

“We can certainly try,” and there it was again. The knife she loved to stab her with  _ again and again.  _ This assertion that they couldn’t have eternity, that the universe could never give them forever. And  _ god  _ it hurt when she said that. “After we dismantle the Board and the Curemother Prime is in our hands we… we can have forever and  _ all  _ the time after that if you so please, darling.”

“You’re too idealistic,” Vespa’s gaze turned cold quickly and it chilled Buddy to the bone. “We’re being hunted down by people a  _ lot  _ bigger than us, Bud, and they’re using  _ me  _ to do it! Just go back to the ship and  _ leave  _ me.”

“No.” Buddy spoke bluntly. With strict authority through the tears in her eyes. “You don’t get to  _ do  _ this to me, Vespa! You don’t get to break my heart  _ again  _ because you’ve decided to sacrifice yourself for the greater good! It’s  _ childish  _ and bafflingly selfish of you. Granted, it may be a bit selfish for me to not want to save a universe without you in it, but I’ll allow myself to be a  _ little  _ bit self-serving!”

“Bud, get it through your  _ head!  _ You’re going to get everyone killed, and for  _ what?  _ Some will of the universe saying we belong together? The fact that you  _ want  _ us to live happily ever after like a fairy-tale? Well, sometimes, we can’t get what we want!”

The look in Vespa’s eyes is enough for Buddy to want Vespa to take the knife attached to her hip and stab her in the throat with it. It might have hurt less to suffocate on her own blood than to try to choke back these tears that felt like broken glass and bile rising up her trachea.

“We were meant to be a pair,” her voice is broken. Wounded. She looked for  _ some  _ emotion in Vespa’s eyes. She saw a pang of guilt for a second, but it was shaken off. The guard she put up was nearly impenetrable. And Buddy wanted the world to swallow her whole in that very moment. “Buddy and Vespa… Vespa and Buddy… the greatest thieves in the universe... ”

“Vespa, the lunatic, and Buddy the Captain who keeps her around because she’s grown too sentimental to shoot a lame horse,” Vespa’s words were venomous, meant to pierce Buddy’s skin and enter her bloodstream.

“That  _ isn’t  _ why I keep you around and you know it! Stop being such a  _ fucking  _ martyr, Vespa, and come back home! Stop hiding behind logic when you’re being ridiculous!”

“I’m not being ridiculous, and you  _ know  _ it. You can hide from them better when they don’t have any way of tracking you down. It’s the best option.”

“So, you think the most logical solution is for you to be captured, tortured, and then killed by Dark Matters while the rest of us are on the run,  _ now  _ without an assassin or a medic on board? Your logic is flawed,  _ darling,”  _ it was Buddy’s turn to be angry. Guarded. “I fear if you run away again, I may never forgive you. It may be more successful in killing me than any of Dark Matters plans will.”

“I don’t want your forgiveness,” Vespa managed to choke out. “I told you. The sooner you  _ hate  _ me for leaving you, Bud, the better. I don’t  _ care  _ if you forgive me. I know what needs to happen and the sooner you get it in your  _ thick  _ skull, the better! You’ve always been like this! Impossibly stubborn, always thinking you know best! Well, sometimes, Bud, you  _ don’t!  _ And you need to accept it.”

“Fine,” she spoke coldly. She  _ had  _ to be cold now. If she let any emotion slip, it would be the end of her. “I’ll go. But answer  _ one  _ question for me, Vespa?”

“What?”

“How did you know it was Dark Matters that was after us? We only figured that out  _ after  _ you left.”

Buddy’s comms went off, a cry from Juno. “Buddy, I thought I saw Vespa for a second but she  _ disappeared  _ right in front of my eyes. I don’t know what  _ happened.  _ It was like she was a fucking ghost or hologram or something.”

“Bud,  _ please  _ go,” Vespa’s eyes are filled with fear now. “I know because I can  _ see  _ them watching me. They’re in my head. They’re  _ here,  _ I know. I can’t shake them off no matter how hard I try.”

Jet’s voice came through next. “I have located Vespa, who says she wants to talk to you. She wanted to apologize for running away.”

“Run.  _ Please,  _ Bud. It’s a trap. I… I was trying to  _ hide  _ so you wouldn’t find me. Agents are on their way.  _ Please.” _

She responded. “Jet. Get away from Vespa. Find the Ruby 7. We need to get away as soon as possible. We need to prepare to infiltrate a Dark Matters ship as soon as possible.”

“Of course, Captain. I take it that it isn’t Vespa who is currently pointing knives at me.”

“No. It isn’t,” Buddy looked at Vespa momentarily and saw both of their walls disintegrate in front of them. “Darling…”

“You don’t have a lot of time!” Vespa shook her head once, twice, three times. “This is the only way I can protect our family, Bud,  _ please  _ just leave!”

_ Their  _ family. Vespa had dismissed the family aspect Buddy clung so hard onto for so long— at least, out loud. This was the first time she had heard her say it and,  _ oh,  _ how she didn’t want it to be the last.

“Can I have a kiss goodbye? I didn’t get one last time. Or the time before,” Buddy spoke with a trembling and desperate voice. Vespa wrapped her arms around Buddy and  _ yanked  _ her closer, placing a passionate kiss on her lips. Buddy kissed back with hunger and far too many tears. She didn’t want to pull away, she  _ never  _ wanted to pull away, but she had to.

“I can handle myself, Bud. Trust me. Isn’t that what relationships are built on? Trust? Do you trust me, Bud?”

“I do. Do you trust me to save you?”

“I do.”

She saw the flash of green and ran to the getaway car where Jet and Juno were already seated. She  _ wanted  _ to grab Vespa, but she had her knives drawn. Vespa wouldn’t seriously injure Buddy, but Buddy knew  _ damn  _ well in such a state of preservation, her wife wouldn’t hesitate to give her a prick to shock her into letting go so she could run away. It was… simpler, to not fight her. She had to trust Vespa. She  _ did  _ trust Vespa, but  _ god  _ was it difficult to let her leave, especially when she felt like she could have stopped it this time.

This is how it always had to be, Buddy thought to herself. She had reached the top of the mountain and, once again— as if by the fates’ design— it had rolled back down to the base. Vespa said they couldn’t be happy forever, and maybe she had been right. As they drove away, Buddy was faced with a decision. She had to accept the futility of this future, of a permanent happiness with Vespa Ilkay. They never could be happy, not forever at least. There would be those moments of happiness, moments where they reached the top of the hill and saw the horizon, but it would always sink to the bottom again.

Buddy Aurinko had decided to go back down to the base of the mountain. She looked at the boulder, all of its trauma and weight and all of the toil necessary to get it back to the peak. She saw its futility and its struggle; she looked at its future of ups and downs forever, at her ability to let the boulder crush her, to simply stop. She looked at the universe and its indifference that she had fought against for decades and she  _ pushed.  _ Buddy Aurinko would always make the decision to push for Vespa.

So, as the Ruby 7 drove away, Buddy took a deep breath. She did not look behind her, no matter how  _ violently  _ the urge ate away at her. They would reach the Carte Blanche, Buddy would descend her hill, and she would begin the cycle anew, with determination in her eyes.

If there was any other choice (and she knew there was), she wanted nothing to do with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no consistent chapter lengths we die like men


	6. Triple Overtime Ambitious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Carte Blanche crew is trying to plan a heist to bring Vespa back home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for a very small mention of eye trauma. it's like. only a little icky.
> 
> Note: I am not a professional heist planner.

Buddy hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but hours of fatigue had caught up with her. She wasn’t sure how long she was out, either, and she was currently, quite frankly, trying to conceal her displeasure with her crew members for allowing her to sleep for so long when Vespa was in the hands of Dark Matters.

She woke up in a state of disarray, in a completely different place from where she had last remembered being. They were in the Ruby 7, running away from the Dark Matters agents that now  _ definitely  _ knew where they were. At first, Buddy had thought they might have been  _ captured _ , and that’s why she was sleeping in a relatively run-of-the-mill bedroom with nothing very indicative of someone living there. And then, when her eye caught the guitar in the corner, she let out a sigh of relief. She was in Jet’s room, of course. Her cane was resting on the nightstand. She grabbed it and, with a  _ decent  _ amount of pain shooting up her back, she started to walk.

She caught herself in the mirror, and saw her deep red lipstick smudged. Warmly, she pressed her fingers to her lips, drinking in that sensation of her most recent kiss with Vespa. They had sworn trust and protection to one another like a marriage vow: a vow they had been renewing as long as they’d known each other.

Her Vespa… was in danger, and that warm floating feeling now mingled with worry. She stepped out into the family room; her brain was already swarming with potential plans to grab her from Dark Matters, each one more dangerous than the last. Much to her surprise, all of the remaining members of the Carte Blanche crew were already in the family room discussing different ideas.

“Oh, good morning, Captain,” Ransom gave a sharp-toothed smile. “Did you sleep well? I certainly hope so, you’ve been running yourself ragged.”

“How long was I asleep…?” Buddy asked. “It was quite inconsiderate of you to  _ let  _ me sleep like that, you know,  _ knowing  _ how badly we need to rescue—”

“When you were in the Ruby 7, you started panicking. Juno gave you a sedative to help calm you, and you winded up falling asleep, so we decided not to wake you. You needed sleep more, Buddy,” Jet commented. He was sitting next to Rita, who had 5 screens all active. “You were not out for that long. Only twelve hours.”

She almost choked. “You let me sleep for  _ that  _ long in such a dire situation? Twelve hours could  _ easily  _ mean life or death.”

“Don’t worry, Buddy,” Jet placed a large hand on her shoulder. “We have all been working diligently while you were sleeping. Well, Rita and I have. I cannot confirm whether or not Steel and Ransom were doing the same, as I was far too focused on our work.”

“We were working!” Juno said, perhaps a bit too defensively. “Ransom has fooled Dark Matters before, so I have no doubt he could do it again.”

“Oh, Juno dear, you really believe in me that much?” Ransom’s eyes practically shone. “Oh, that’s so  _ sweet  _ of you to believe me!” he cleared his throat, “Anyway. It  _ is  _ true that I got into Dark Matters before with the help of some friends more powerful than I. I was trying to see if that connection was a bridge I burnt or not.”

“And?”

“Well, it turns out I’m truly  _ prodigal  _ in bridge burning,” he laughed awkwardly. “But, this one wasn’t  _ completely  _ crisped. While it’s unlikely that  _ any  _ of us could manage to sneak in the front door when they’re actively looking for us, xe  _ did  _ mention that it was possible to hack and forge credentials and swipes. It just takes a very… talented hacker. Xe  _ was  _ that hacker for me when I went to steal Grimm’s mask, but now I think we have someone even  _ better,  _ don’t we, Rita?”

“Absolutely!” Rita chimed in, her smile wide. “So, first, Mista Jet and I made sure we hauled off that planet as soon and discreetly as possible! I also made sure to cloak the ship pretty well so I don’t think they’ll be able to find us when we’re flyin. I’ve been working on making sure we can track Miss Vespa’s location still and, more importantly, to make sure their nosy little selves can’t see that we can see them, because, hoo boy, that sure would be an ugly little mess, wouldn’t it?”

Buddy was… impressed with all of their work, enough so that the knot in her stomach began to untie itself. A small smile crept its way onto her face. “Good work everyone. It’s nice to know I can rely on you for problem-solving as much as I can for the implementation. It  _ does  _ feel a bit better to be well-rested, I will admit.”

“It is important for our captain to take care of herself. It does no one any good for you to overwork yourself,” Jet spoke without  _ strong  _ emotion in his voice, but Buddy (who knew him better than anyone) could hear just a hint of fondness in his tone. “You’re too stubborn sometimes, you know. You make it very hard for others to take care of you.”

“Ah, Vespa always says the same thing,” Buddy let out a laugh. “We’re the galaxy’s two most stubborn women. I think the universe put the two of us together to punish us for such bull-headedness sometimes. I just prefer to care for others rather than the reverse. I’m a natural born leader, after all.”

“Yes, but even the greatest leaders like yourself need to be taken care of sometimes, Captain,” Ransom handed her a glass of water and her medication. “But, the four of us have been working quite diligently to try to get this done; however, there are a few bits that I think  _ your  _ expertise would suit better.”

“You mean, how to actually get on the ship and extract Vespa?” she responded, before popping all of the pills in her mouth and swallowing them with a single gulp of water. “That  _ does  _ create some problems, doesn’t it? Especially given an undercover job simply… won’t work, will it? I suppose we need to see just  _ how  _ many agents we’re working with, don’t we? Rita. Could you try to locate exactly  _ which  _ Dark Matters ship Vespa is on? And then try to see if there are any cameras on that ship.”

“Dark Matters always baffles me, to be honest,” Juno sighed. “I’m not sure if there are going to be any cameras, because they don’t like the idea of  _ anyone  _ watching them. However, I know for a  _ fact  _ Dark Matters likes to watch their own employees like a hawk. It’s a… pretty fucked up process to climb that ladder. Sasha’s got balls made of titanium to go through all of that.”

Buddy nodded. “If it’s only a  _ small  _ amount of agents, I say we fake a surrender, come in guns blazing, and shoot our—” she interrupted her own train of thought. “Right, one of your conditions. We  _ can’t  _ shoot our way out of things. Well, at the very least, we cannot  _ kill  _ our way out, but that makes things a hell of a lot more difficult.”

“Yeah, being morally opposed to  _ murder  _ makes things  _ so  _ much harder, Buddy. My bad,” Juno quipped and rolled his eye. “Well, until we can think of a less-murdery plan for extracting Vespa, we’re at a stalemate.”

“If we had someone who  _ wasn’t  _ part of the crime family who we could hack into Dark Matters, they could pretend to bring someone— say, Buddy— in. Then, they could steal Vespa away and we’d be there to pick her up. Similar to my own con job, but stealing a person rather than an ancient Martian artifact,” Ransom offered his own idea. “Although, do be warned, I have  _ no  _ idea who this person would be. As I stated previously, I’m an expert at  _ burning  _ bridges, not maintaining them.”

They all had a moment where they paused, going over their mental list of contacts. Did  _ any  _ of them have someone willing to take such a… huge risk for them?

“You see,  _ theoretically,  _ there  _ is  _ someone on Mars I might be able to ask,” Juno half-spoke and half-winced. “Except the thing is I feel like she’s  _ really  _ not going to like me calling her for an insanely dangerous job  _ again.  _ I’ve already almost gotten her killed more times than necessary. But, hey, she’s the ex-fling I’m on best terms with so, that’s a point for me.”

“Oh, you mean that really gorgeous PI with the  _ beautiful  _ braids and the really jawline that could slice me in half like a stick of bu—”

“Yes, Rita,” Juno sighed. “That one. Alessandra Strong. That woman can survive anything, I’m pretty sure. She survived the Martian desert and some pretty nasty situations in the war. She’d blend  _ right  _ in with Dark Matters.”

“But you worry you would be asking too much of her?” Buddy sighed. “And given the fact that poor Pete’s expression has been souring by the second since you  _ mentioned  _ her being an ex-fling— perhaps it would be best to find someone who may stir up… less interpersonal conflict?”

“Fair,” Juno sighed. “I don’t even know if she knows I’m alive. There was this whole period where I was missing and presumed dead and I, uh, don’t know if that was ever clarified. But there is  _ one  _ more bridge I have that isn’t totally burnt but, believe me, it’s a  _ bad  _ idea. Especially if Sasha is working with us, because if there are two people she can identify in a  _ heartbeat,  _ it’s Mick and I.”

“I fear bringing in anyone who isn’t one of us endangers their life immensely. Dark Matters has instructions to bring  _ us  _ in alive. Anyone who might be harboring us is, well, fair game, I’m afraid,” Ransom commented. “And I listen to you talk about this Mick Mercury man a lot. I know if anything were to happen to him, Juno, you would blame yourself immensely for it.”

Juno opened his mouth as if to protest, but shut it once more. It was Buddy’s turn to speak now. “Well, Pete, this was originally your suggestion. I’m afraid we all have  _ nasty  _ tendencies to burn bridges though, don’t we? Though mine aren’t burnt as much as they are… crumbled with age. Ten years spent talking to no one, followed by five years of talking to primarily only  _ one  _ person can do that to a contact list. I cannot say for certain if there are any clients I trust enough to risk their lives for me.”

“If I may, Captain,” Ransom suggested. “I believe we can have Rita pull up what Dark Matters has on all of us. I doubt they know my name or face. At  _ most  _ they would have an alias. Perhaps a  _ vague  _ sense of what my face looks like. But my face can change quite easily.”

“I would say it’s a plan with far too many risks, however, I don’t think we’ll find one with  _ less  _ risks. Dealing with Dark Matters is incredibly dangerous business, after all. You  _ are  _ the least likely to have all of your information out there, after all. I’ve made far too big of a name for myself and Juno has managed to leave an even  _ bigger  _ footprint of information, miraculously.”

“Hey!”

“If you don’t want me to point it out, work on being less traceable, darling,” she pinched his cheek affectionately. “While this plan  _ could  _ work, you would have no legitimate way of contacting Dark Matters, even with a foolproof disguise. I still think faking a surrender is the best way, though this begs the question of how to get  _ out  _ of their custody without killing anyone.”

“Now, was the stipulation that  _ no one  _ could kill anyone or just  _ Juno  _ couldn’t kill someone,” Ransom’s voice lit up with an idea, though his face fell once he caught Juno’s glare. “Well, never mind then.”

“Well, if I may,” Rita raised her hand. “I was lookin at what information Dark Matters has out for us and it’s some  _ real  _ interesting stuff. So, they call us the  _ Aurinkos  _ which I think is real nice because it feels like we’re a real family, yanno? But anyway, they’ve got a different amount of information on all of us. There’s lotsa stuff on Mista Steel, even right down to what his voice sounds like. Real creepy. They know, like,  _ everything  _ about him. Anyway, then there’s some stuff about Mista Jet, mostly his name and what he looks like. Some stuff he’s done, but nothing that you can’t catch in a stream special. There’s also  _ loads  _ about yours and Miss Vespa’s history, Captain A! What I found  _ real  _ interesting about your file, Captain A, is that they said they have your greatest weakness on file.”

“My greatest weakness?” she walked over to the screen, wanting to get a better look. “Do share. I would  _ love  _ to be aware of my own weakness. I can’t say I know what it is.”

“Well, it says right here in your file that your greatest weakness is Miss Vespa. And the best way to get to  _ you  _ is get to Miss Vespa,” Rita continued to explain. “Which, I guess they think they’ve got you real good right now!”

“Yes, I suppose that is what they must be thinking,” Buddy swallowed, all of a sudden very uncomfortable. 

She knew she had her weaknesses: her deteriorating physical condition stuck out most to her, but she knew that was only supplementary to someone who was trying, not only to catch her, but to get her to talk. What disturbed her most, she supposed, was that Dark Matters wasn’t wrong in their assumptions. All of her failing organs, food allergies, and weakened bones could never compare to the fact that Buddy would make the universe her funeral pyre and make sure every galaxy was the same flaming red as her hair if it meant she could secure Vespa’s safety. It was a weakness, but not one Buddy wanted to fix.

“But, do continue, Rita,” Ransom smiled. “What do they have on you and I?”

“Well, that’s the  _ real  _ weird part, yanno. They don’t have our names in the file at all. They just have  _ TWO UNNAMED MEMBERS.  _ And very little information about us, but they  _ do  _ have our faces. Well, real blurry pictures of our faces. I’m guessing they’re from some weird kind of surveillance bot. BUT! They call you  _ The Nameless Thief _ , Mista Ransom, and have information on  _ some  _ of your jobs, but not all of the ones I know you’ve done. And then there ain’t really much about me at all, just that I’m a super talented and beautiful hacker! Okay, well, I added the beautiful part myself but it would still be nice to hear.”

“Interesting. I expected information about myself to be scarce, but I think it’s very interesting that that cannot find anything on you. Very impressive. I take it you take steps not to leave a digital trace?”

“Oh yeah! I know how to find loads of information, so I try to scrub my own information as much as possible. I don’t like people knowin what I get up to in my spare time. It’s super creepy, yanno?”

Buddy listened to them speak, trying to configure all of this into a plan. The fact that those two weren’t well known, even with Dark Matters’ surveillance, was some kind of asset. Part of this made her feel oddly warm inside, seeing the crew work so well together. Buddy had never had children, but she imagined this is what mothers must feel like when their children do something absolutely wonderful. She was used to swelling with her own pride, but this was pride in something she had  _ created.  _ Pride in her family, and how they cooperated. As she continued to listen, an idea struck in her head.

“Okay. I think I’ve got it,” Buddy smiled. She felt an odd sense of calm rush over her as she gave the details for her plan. They had this, didn’t they? “I will fake my surrender to Dark Matters. Let them take me down. Then, Rita can hack a disguised Ransom into Dark Matters. Have him pose as a superior officer with orders to move us to a more secure ship. Surely you can forge the necessary paperwork.”

“Buddy, I feel like it’s very dangerous for you to go on a Dark Matters ship alone. You cannot be certain that they will be the same agents, or the same ship, that has Vespa,” Jet commented. His brow was  _ just  _ slightly furrowed, which signalled a very deep concern he wasn’t trying to express too heavy handedly. Buddy still felt it though, but that was the impact of years of… very difficult friendship. She could hear his hidden intentions.  _ You’re doing it again, Buddy. Far too ready to throw yourself onto the pyre. _

“You make a fair point, Jet, but I am a very charming woman. I know how to bargain. No information unless they bring me to Vespa,” Buddy  _ knew  _ she could do this and she would manage to do it just fine. However, she  _ also  _ knew that Jet was making a logical argument.

“Yes, but I still feel that it is dangerous for you to go alone. Your file is correct in saying that Vespa is your greatest weakness. You tend to lose your sense of self-preservation when it comes to her. You’re very aware of this, and you know it.”

Buddy huffed and folded her arms, much like a young child not being granted her way. She knew she was unable to argue her way out of this, mostly because Jet was  _ annoyingly  _ correct. What was, perhaps, more irritating was the fact that he was not trying to be smug or certain about anything. He was just… concerned for her. When she looked at the rest of the crew: they were all concerned for her as well.

“Having me go with someone endangers  _ two  _ crew members rather than one. We would have to operate at half-capacity back on the  _ Carte Blanche  _ and that’s  _ incredibly  _ dangerous, especially given that people are still looking for you,” the truth of the matter was that, despite being confident in her plans, there were still too many risks for Buddy to feel completely comfortable sacrificing more members than necessary. Anything that went wrong was blood on  _ her  _ hands. The thought was too terrifying to dwell on. Thank god, Juno spoke up to break the thought process.

“Buddy, I would be willing to go with you,” he said. “I’m  _ kind of  _ an expert at picking out self-destructive behavior, given that it was a key point of my personality for thirty-nine years. I gotta agree with the big guy, here. It’s dangerous to try to do a major thing like this alone. I mean, think about it. Would you let Ransom go all alone to save me? Or vice versa? The answer is no, because we would wind up getting ourselves in  _ way  _ more trouble.”

“I see my crime family is staging a mutiny against my judgement,” she made sure to keep her tone light and joking, to show that there was no  _ real  _ serious offense to her words. “However, I am not you or Ransom. I am far more experienced and clever. Though, I suppose you make a fair point. Heists like these involve a certain degree of… cooperation. And, should you be correct in your assumption that your old friend is one of the people pursuing us, you make the most useful asset.”

“So, is that a yes to me joining you?” Juno wore a smug smile. Unlike Jet, Juno’s smugness was  _ usually  _ intended. He was lucky Buddy found him so like her Vespa (back in their prime, that confident smirk of hers would cause her heart to flutter so terribly and Juno’s expressions could pose as a mirror).

“Yes,” she rolled her eye. “Rita, how long do you think it would take to hack Ransom into Dark Matters’ system? Vespa has already been in their custody for far longer than I would like, but I would like to avoid Juno and I being in there for  _ too  _ terribly long.”

“To get all the papers and documents forged, I would say three days maximum, Captain A! It would take a normal hacker  _ weeks,  _ but, one, I ain’t a normal hacker and, two, I’ve already been workin on getting Mista Ransom into Dark Matters for hours while you were asleep.”

“What did we  _ say  _ about making decisions without my being there?” Buddy groaned, placing a hand to her temple. Jet handed her a glass of water, which she drank after thanking him quietly.

“Well, we didn’t fully execute the plan, so  _ technically  _ we didn’t fully make the decision, yanno?” Rita defended herself. “We just started to lay the groundwork in order to save time, which  _ you  _ wanted us to do, Captain A!”

“Fair point, Rita. Continue your work. We can have a more in-depth conversation about what I mean  _ after  _ we’re finished getting her back. Jet, have us land on the next habitable planet or moon we can. Juno and I will prepare our surrender. We will each have several hidden comms. How comfortable are you with putting comms in weird places, Juno?”

His eye widened and his face went a few shades more pallid. “Well, I mean, usually it’s polite to buy a lady a drink before you try—”

“Your  _ eye socket,  _ Juno,” Buddy corrected him, though it still did make Juno wince. “You’ve got an empty one to spare and no one’s going to pry it open to check for a communicator.”

“That’s… very clever, Buddy. Frankly, a little  _ disgusting  _ and super uncomfortable, but clever,” he contorted his face into a disgusted expression, placing a hand over his eyepatch. “You’ve got a cybernetic though. Where are you hiding yours?”

“Classic places. A hairpin, underneath my breasts, typical espionne, but not typical enough to be predictable. I would sew another one into your eyepatch, just to be safe. Pin another in your hair. I cannot say how desperately they’ll search.”

Buddy felt nervous again. What a terribly unpleasant feeling, she thought. It tried to intercept her plans, make her second guess what decisions they had made, and for what? Anxiety never served her any purpose, never made anything  _ easier  _ on her. Not once had she ever looked back and thought  _ Well, I sure am glad I listened to that little voice in my head telling me to stop.  _ Though, maybe if she had listened, things would have been different.

Maybe if she had listened to Vespa’s superstitions all those years ago, they never would have gotten caught. They would be married and living… normal lives. Well, as normal as the two of them could live. Perhaps they would have had some semblance of domesticity. Part of her had always wanted a family. Children even, maybe. A tiny thief they could raise. The thought had always warmed her heart, but now it was a source of melancholy. The two women were far older than they had imagined themselves being, with far more baggage than they ever imagine themselves carrying. But maybe if she had listened, their lives would have gone down a different path.

“You okay, Bud?” Juno placed a hand on her shoulder. “You were zoning out a bit.”

“What did you…? Never mind. Yes, I’m fine. I just was reminiscing a bit too much, I suppose. I’ve become terribly sappy, Juno,” she laughed it off, though that longing still weighed down on her chest. “Anyway, secure your comms where you need to. We should be landing soon. We’ll walk a decent amount away from the ship, and then send out a signal.”

“Right,” he nodded. “I’ll just make sure I have everything ready.”

“Juno, darling?” Buddy called out to him. He turned around. “Are you nervous about this mission? I understand if you are.”

“I’d be stupid if I wasn’t, Buddy,” he used her full name this time. Perhaps he had noticed that she had noticed. “But, I trust you not to get us killed. And I trust the rest of the crew not to get us killed as well. That’s a real weird thing for me, you know? Something I’ve had to get used to. Trusting people.”

“I’m glad that you can trust us, Juno,” her smile was genuine and warm. “I’m very proud of you, you know. That you’ve been able to trust us. I know it isn’t easy, given how little you’ve been able to trust others in the past.”

“Thanks, mom,” Juno nudged her a bit. Buddy felt some  _ strange  _ emotion swell through her core. Powerful and positive and  _ secure.  _ She felt… loved in a way not many people had ever loved her. Of course, Vespa loved her, but it was so…  _ different _ when love mingled with romantic and sexual passion. Juno loved her in such a wholly  _ familial  _ way. The word mom, though said with a joking turn, felt real. Perhaps he really  _ did  _ view her as a positive maternal figure. The thought made her smile again. “What about you? Are you nervous?”

“Typically, I would say that Buddy Aurinko doesn’t know the definition of nervous,” she chuckled. “However, this is not a typical job for me. I would be stupid if I wasn’t nervous, Juno. There’s a lot on the line. However, I trust you and the rest of the family to do their jobs. I hired competent people; I would be foolish if I didn’t rely on you guys.”

“And that’s what  _ you’re  _ learning, huh?” he commented. His expression was calm and gentle and oh-so understanding. “That a leader has to learn to rely on her crew to boost her up. That a leader  _ can  _ be helped by others and still be respected? It’s a good lesson to learn.”

“What are you, my therapist?”

“Not enough creds in the world, Buddy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very dialogue-heavy, which is a bit of a change from my normal paragraphs of yearning. Don't worry. You'll get your yearning back soon. Also I am sorry that I did not bring in Mick. I will write a fun one-shot later where they DID decide to bring Mick Mercury on a Dark Matters heist.


	7. And It's So Strange, I Waited For It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno and Buddy prepare for their surrender. It's... scary, but they can try to manage.

The planet they had landed on was beautiful— with the strangest crystalline waterfalls Buddy had ever seen. Its natural scenery was an ode to serenity— one she would have been able to appreciate a lot more if she wasn’t currently walking off to sacrifice everything she had. The calming aura of the planet  _ did  _ have some effect in easing the nerves that bit at her heels like anxious hounds.

As she and Juno were about to exit the Carte Blanche to carry forth the plan, Ransom ran up to the door. He pulled Juno into a long kiss, dipping him slightly. They both pulled away, breathless and with stars in their eyes. For some reason inexplicable to Buddy, she caught herself swept up in emotion. Her heart  _ ached,  _ yet she was unsure of whether or not to call the emotion painful. Moreso, she was made aware of a present and poignant longing. It was a melancholy joy, to see such an intimate display of love—  _ oh,  _ how it made her miss Vespa and those days when Buddy would spin her and dip her to the floor, kissing as much of her as she could.

“I apologize for such a… deep display of affection, Captain,” Ransom cleared his throat and smoothed his shirt. “I figured it would be good luck— to depart with a kiss. I didn’t expect you to watch so… intensely, is all.”

Buddy waved the apology off. “I understand what it’s like to be in love with someone, Pete, and to be afraid for their well being. I’m not prudish enough to condemn a goodbye kiss. Shall we start to head off, Juno?”

“Yeah,” he replied, placing a final, small kiss onto Peter’s hand, murmuring an “ _ I love you” _ into it  _ just  _ audibly enough for Buddy to catch it. He put his hands in his pockets and joined Buddy. Ransom headed back into the ship, though they caught his silhouette watching them from the window.

“He makes you quite happy, doesn’t he?” Buddy said once they had walked for a bit. “It’s a bit endearing. Vespa always joked about how  _ nauseating  _ it was to see the two of you together—”

“Oh, I know. She constantly commented on it.”

“You’d be surprised, Juno, she’s quite the romantic. Though I fear she may  _ skin  _ me if she found out I’m telling you this,” she let out a laugh that blended fond reminiscence and fearful melancholy. “We never actually got married, but we would talk about it often. Marriage and our dreams of the future. Always the realist, my Vespa, but she would… indulge me in my pipe dreams on occasion.”

Buddy told Juno the story of the time the two of them had passed by a woman wearing the most magnificent ring, something very obviously antique and bordering on ancient. Buddy had never seen something so beautiful: a dark, sanguine ruby cut into a teardrop— like a single drop of blood— surrounded by a golden band, swirled like vines, with tiny, encrusted diamonds surrounding the gem and trailing off onto the band. Something like that was most likely nearly  _ priceless—  _ difficult or impossible to replicate— and something Buddy could not take her eyes off of. She hadn’t uttered a word about it as they passed by. To be quite frank, the ring had faded into the back of her mind once they had walked away, though she hadn’t forgotten the impression it made on her. How… nice it would have been to own something like this.

She was a young thief back in those days— both of them were. It was before the names Buddy and Vespa were anything more than names the other whispered in tender confessions. Neither of them had tasted much of  _ luxury  _ in the way the upper class Martians did, but Buddy had always had champagne taste on a tap water budget. And Vespa, fine with tap water and perhaps uncomfortable with the high class attitude of champagne, got drunk off of the way Buddy’s face lit up when she was draped in stolen riches. They were nothing yet, but they knew they would be something. Such a good pair were meant to leave a mark on the galaxy: Achilles and Patroclus, Antony and Cleopatra, Buddy and Vespa— legends in the making. However, even before infamy, they both possessed the skills that eventually made them infamous. Vespa was cunning and quick, but she was also  _ incredibly  _ observant of everything around her, including (if not especially) the woman she had decided she wanted to spend forever with.

A week after the encounter with the woman in the street, the two were sharing a meal Vespa had cooked using ingredients they had pilfered from some market on the street when they realized that they hadn’t budgeted enough for food and served it with a bottle of expensive wine they had received as a thank you bonus from a client. Vespa had been so oddly flustered over this dinner in a way Buddy hadn’t seen her get since the beginnings of their relationship.

“I got something for you,” she stammered out. “It’s nothing big. I just thought that it’s something you deserved to have.”

Vespa slid a small, velvet pouch over to Buddy, who looked at it with wide eyes. She undid the drawstring and emptied the contents. And there it was: a ring with a golden band, encrusted with tiny diamonds and, in the center, a ruby like a blood drop glinting in the light. The same, priceless ring she had admired so silently. Vespa had noticed.

“Happy anniversary, Bud,” she wore a sort of nervous smile that sent butterflies fluttering loose in Buddy’s stomach and tears into her eyes and, though Vespa’s hands were shaking, she raised her glass. “And, if you don’t get sick of me after this one, here’s to many, many more.”

Buddy felt the tears well up further. “Vespa— are you… how did you?”

“Your eyes light up in this really beautiful way when you see something you want,” Vespa shrugged. “Like they’re doing it  _ right  _ now as you’re looking at me and I think I’m gonna become a stupid fucking pile of mush if you keep  _ looking at me like that.  _ But… I saw that light in your eyes when we were walking. It wasn’t that hard of a pickpocketing job and you deserve to have something nice like that.”

There was a pregnant pause before she spoke again. “Buddy, I know with the whole  _ dangerous thieves making a name for ourselves  _ thing we’re building and the fact that we don’t even have enough money to eat right now, let alone even  _ think  _ of a wedding right now, I was just thinking, well, it’s something you talk about a lot in the future and it’s…” she growled a bit under her breath, her cheeks growing redder. “It’s a nice promise to make. Or an idea or maybe a stupid pipe dream but, hey, it’s one I… like. Buddy and Vespa, Vespa and Buddy. For as long as we live.”

Buddy remembered how she was so  _ overwhelmed  _ with emotion she couldn’t respond beyond happy sobs and encouraging nods. Vespa slipped the ring onto her finger. It was a perfect fit. Vespa kissed her. She was a perfect fit too.

When she had finished telling the story to Juno, she heard a sniffle come from him and caught him wiping his eye. “Are you crying, Juno?”

“No, shut up,” he said too quickly and  _ far  _ too defensively. “It was just a… sweet story is all. I never expected Vespa to be the kind for a grand romantic gesture like that. I guess I’m just a bit of a romantic at heart,” despite the ending sentence dripping in sarcasm, Buddy knew he was being at least a little genuine.

“When we were younger, it felt like our life was one grand romantic gesture after another. Vespa  _ did  _ so love to surprise me like that. And she calls  _ me  _ a sap,” Buddy could not contain her fondness for her as she detailed her memories. She could picture how they used to be so  _ clearly  _ in her head. They were larger than life, riding on a wave of grandeur and perceived invincibility. Buddy had always had the bigger ego, she was  _ well  _ aware of this, but Vespa stood next to her in the same, statuesque manner. She didn’t know if they were villains or heroes for neither the epic hero nor the evil conqueror stood as grandiose as Buddy and Vespa— names intertwined and inseparable, as if it were a single word.

And then, there they were now. Vespa called herself a washed up legend, but Buddy damned the thought. They were never legends, not yet anyway. Legends were dead, old things but Buddy and Vespa were vibrant and alive and (though, admittedly less young and more frail than they had been before their separation) they were going to do the impossible together. Buddy had always been the idealist, but this future was not grounded in floating idealism. It was based in  _ desire  _ and need and Vespa, as she had done back when they were two young women with fresh, unwrinkled faces, got drunk off the way Buddy lit up when she got what she wanted.

“What happened to the ring?” Juno asked once his emotions had calmed enough for him to stop sniffling. “I’ve never seen you wear it.”

“It’s locked in my most secure jewelry box for a… calmer future. Some things are too priceless to wear in public. I would be beside myself should someone ever try to steal it. I did wear it quite often, though. After I was released from prison, I wore it every day for two years, nervously twisting it as I waited at the lighthouse. When I decided to pick up this… high-risk lifestyle again, I tucked it away for safekeeping.”

They weren’t sure how long they had been walking, but they continued to walk further, wishing to minimize the amount of danger they were posing to the rest of the crew as much as possible. The walking didn’t bother Buddy as much as she thought it was going to. Her back seemed to be behaving more than it had been before (perhaps, being well-rested and properly medicated  _ did  _ come with its occasional perks). The air of the planet seemed to carry itself almost melodically, with every breeze singing harmonies. The wind was cool, but in a way that was calming and kept her senses clinging to the world.

“You know, Buddy, this planet is  _ almost  _ nice enough to make me forget that we’re offering ourselves to Dark Matters like two fat, juicy steaks to the dogs,” Juno closed his eye, feeling the air on his cool skin. “I mean, it’s not a complaint. Helps stave off the panic attack I want to have.”

“You didn’t have to come, you know,” she responded, feeling guilt creep into her. Juno was placing himself intentionally in harm’s way. Though she was not personally familiar with Juno at his  _ most  _ self-destructive, she knew his past. And she knew his need to help others, to try his best to do good, no matter the cost it had to him personally. Old habits die hard and, well, Buddy supposed she was worried Juno’s were still alive, hanging on by a thread.

“I know, but none of us wanted you to do this alone,” his reply came in a soft tone and a softer expression. “I know this hasn’t been… easy for you. And I can’t imagine it’s gotten any easier since you found out Vespa got caught.”

Frankly, Buddy hadn’t allowed herself to take the time to process it emotionally. After she had woken up from her godforsaken rest ( _ why  _ had they allowed her to sleep so long?), she had gotten right to business. Perhaps it was… easier? To not process the emotions she knew would be heavy. She could process it all later, when Vespa was safe in her arms again.

“I’ve been doing alright, actually,” she informed him. “It makes it much easier that I haven’t had much time alone. It’s easier to not think about such negative emotions when one occupies oneself.”

“Ah, you’re doing what Ransom does with  _ his  _ negative feelings.”

“I beg your pardon?” Buddy’s voice rose in pitch, clearly taken off-guard.

“The two of us have talked about it. A  _ lot.  _ Instead of processing negative thoughts or emotions in the moment, he… procrastinates feeling them. Files them away  _ For Future Consideration,  _ except that future is never defined, which gives him hell of a good excuse to never think about it. He’s a man composed primarily of repressed emotions. But, you’re doing the same thing. Well, kind of. You’re keeping yourself busy to avoid thinking about Vespa and how scared you are. Which, hey, maybe it’s not the worst thing to do in this circumstance. Not that I’m advocating for emotional repression. I am definitely  _ not  _ doing that.”

“I’m not actively  _ repressing  _ my emotions about the current state of things. I am just otherwise… occupied at the moment, is all,” Buddy brushed it off. “The stakes are far too high currently to let wallowing in fear and self-pity stop me. Therefore, I will think about how scared and upset I may be at a later point in time.”

Buddy was a shark at the current moment; she  _ had  _ to keep moving, keep planning, keep acting, or she would drown in the weight of the situation. Sometimes, even throughout her perpetual movement, a stray sob tried to climb out of her mouth. Buddy swallowed the feelings and kept swimming. This was… inconvenient— to put it in the lightest of terms— the way she was just trying to focus on the task at hand when, like a sneak attack, a pang of panic or crushing grief would hit her. It felt like it stole all the breath from her lungs for a moment. But, she couldn’t crumple to the floor and sob, no matter how badly she wanted to. Perhaps, the calming air of this scenery was… helpful, even though it was  _ incredibly  _ strange.

Every time panic rose in her chest, the planet responded by issuing another cooling breeze, or a calming rustle. It sang a melody to help steady her breathing and slow down her heartbeat. Even if she  _ wanted  _ to panic, the surrounding environment made it impossible. She watched the water cascade down floating waterfalls, like tiny jewels sparkling in a perfect sunlight. Just  _ where  _ had they landed? Buddy figured a detail like that wasn’t important, considering the planet was nothing but a pickup location to board a Dark Matters ship.

“I wish I could feel afraid right now, Juno,” Buddy admitted. “It would make so much more sense. But, this planet seems to be upset with me if I feel anything less than tranquil. Or, at least this part of it. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“I think Rita might have mentioned something like it at one point,” Juno sighed. “How she was watching this romance stream and the two lovers were in a  _ Forest of Tranquility  _ or whatever. Mentioned that it was a lovely place for a honeymoon for when— just… um— that it was a lovely place.”

Buddy watched Juno wriggle within his own skin, before the wind picked up and cooed to him softly, like a mother to her babe. “It would be a lovely place to vacation as a couple, but perhaps it would be best to drop the topic, hm? I would hate to make you uncomfortable, Juno.”

“Back when I was engaged, Rita was, well,  _ very  _ excitable about wedding planning. She talked about it  _ all  _ the time. It was actually really helpful to have her come with me to go wedding dress shopping. And, well, now that dress is sitting in a box collecting dust, so all of her effort was for nothing. It’s funny, when Diamond— uh, my ex— walked out on me, I felt bad for Rita. Like, I had wasted her time.”

Buddy didn’t look at Juno with pity, for she knew that he flinched away from that emotion as much as possible. Instead, she nodded and placed a hand on his shoulder, rubbing her thumb in circles around his shoulder blade. “I don’t think Rita considers it a waste of time— she seems the kind to get very excitable about those things. I think it’s interesting, how you go through a great trauma and focus on how it affects other people’s perception of you, rather than your own mental health.”

“Oh, I know how it affected my mental health. I almost lost my job— winded up quitting anyway— got even  _ worse  _ with the shit I was putting into my body and swore off any serious romantic relationships for what I  _ thought _ would be life. I was really into destroying everything I had. Took a lot of talent, really, to spiral that badly.”

Juno discussed these manners so… nonchalantly, similar to the way in which one might discuss the weather or anything mundane. Buddy’s heart panged in sympathy, despite the fact that it didn’t seem to upset him all too much. “It’s good of you to be able to talk about this to someone,” she told him. “I think it’s good that you didn’t— swear off romance for life, I mean. It isn’t for everyone, but it seems to suit you quite well.”

He gave a noncommittal shrug and chuckled under his breath. “I guess. It’s… weird. I’m not  _ used  _ to letting myself be loved like that. I like it though. Here’s to hoping Dark Matters doesn’t cut us into little pieces so we can  _ continue  _ being in love.”

“They want us  _ alive,  _ Juno,” she took a deep breath to calm herself. “Just… remember that. They need information from us, so they won’t kill us. Besides, they’re going to want the whole team, and we make great bait in their eyes. Much like how they’re using Vespa to bait me to come.”

“Do you think they’re expecting you to surrender?”

“I don’t think it’ll be the biggest surprise of the century for them, no, but I don’t know if they know exactly what to expect from me. I would like to think I’m not  _ that  _ predictable of a target. I like to give people a challenge, darling.”

Buddy was unsure of how long of how long they had been walking, just that the Carte Blanche was completely lost; she was unsure about whether or not she could find her way back to the ship if she  _ tried.  _ And this was exactly how she wanted it. Dark Matters wouldn’t be able to find the ship: just Buddy and Juno. Her fingers brushed against the button on her comms, not quite ready to call them yet. Anxiety caused her stomach to twist and none of the shimmering waterfalls or singing breezes of this  _ Forest of Tranquility  _ could cause it to unknot itself.

Dark Matters wanted them alive, yes, but they never mentioned being unharmed. They wanted information from all of them, and they were never well known for being… merciful in their methods. Buddy closed her eye, trying to calm herself, but a face flashed in her mind the moment her vision allowed it. Her mind conjured an image of Vespa,  _ her  _ Vespa, her face contorted in pain, bleeding and broken and scared— oh god, how did she get so many awful bruises what are they doing to her oh, god, how cruel were they being to her all to get information on Buddy— she could hear her calling over and over and over again  _ Buddy, Buddy, Buddy, Bud, Bud, Bud, please, please, please, Buddy, Buddy _ —

“Buddy!” she heard Juno’s voice through Vespa’s imaginary screams. Her chest was impossibly tight, breathing felt impossible. It felt like someone had their wicked hands wrapped tightly around her heart and her lungs. She felt Juno wrap her arms around his shoulder as her legs shook. 

“God, they— Vespa— they—” she tried to choke out, gripping her pant leg until her knuckles started to turn white. “I— I let her— I— my fault— I—”

“Shhh, shh, shh… it’s okay. Vespa’s going to be okay. This isn’t your fault, Bud. Just… focus on your breathing, alright? It’s just a panic attack, you’ll be okay. We’re going to find Vespa, but we gotta get you calm first, okay?”

Buddy initially tried to shrug off Juno’s physical support, partially because of panic, and out of pride. She didn’t  _ panic  _ like this, not in front of anyone that wasn’t Vespa or Jet. However, she knew her own strength, when she could support herself and when her legs were about to give up on her. She placed her weight against Juno. He was broad and sturdy and… oddly comforting, with the way his thumb rubbed back and forth along her shoulder as his voice continued to gently  _ shhh.  _ She had never really expected him to be the nurturing type; it was quite surprising, but a pleasant one.

It was hard to calm down when those damned images were determined to stick to her conscious. Vespa had looked… so scared when they last parted. And she refused to just go with them! She  _ refused  _ and they could have made it— they really could have— but she was so  _ stubborn  _ and so determined to save Buddy using herself as collateral. She was always so  _ stupidly  _ self-sacrificing, especially if it meant saving Buddy. It… hurt to see her sacrifice herself so willingly, as if she were nothing but a lamb for slaughter, because Buddy would have to see the center of her universe hurt herself time and time again.

She picked at the skin on her arms with her nails. Luckily, those two fingers were cut shorter than the others, but it still left little crescent-shaped indents on her arms. They  _ had  _ to send the ping, to surrender everything. She looked at Juno, who supported her shaking weight as she struggled to stand for herself and felt guilt swirl within her. Dark Matters wasn’t going to go  _ easy  _ on them— she wasn’t foolishly naive enough to believe such a thing— and she knew any pain they inflicted upon Juno was, at the root of it, her fault. And he had put his body on the front line for her. The little voice in the back of her head told her she didn’t deserve it. Maybe it was right, but she very often needed things she might not have deserved. That was the essence of thieving, was it not? She didn’t  _ deserve  _ the Curemother Prime, but she needed it. Mostly because other people deserved to be freed from the corruption of the Board of Fresh Starts. Vespa and every other person like her deserved freedom, and so Buddy needed it.

“You don’t need to worry about me, you know,” Juno consoled her. “I’ve handled loads worse. I was trapped underground in a Martian tomb being forced to read people’s minds until my eye exploded. I can handle what Dark Matters can throw.”

“What made you think I was worrying about you, Juno?” she raised an eyebrow though her voice trembled along with the rest of her.

“You have this look in your eye. I know what it looks like when people are worried about me— I’ve got a lot of experience in that field,” he gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “I’ll be fine. Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded. “I think so. I’m just concerned. I can’t help but worry about how badly they’ve hurt Vespa in order to get information from her. It makes me sick to think about. I just want to see her.”

“Well,” Juno shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do you think we’ve made enough distance from the ship?”

“Yes,” as Buddy spoke, she let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding in. It was heavy and exhausted. “Are you sure you want to do this, Juno? You can back out. I don’t want you to suffer for my sake. I don’t want you to… sacrifice yourself because you feel you have to.”

Juno sighed and shook his head. “I’m not sacrificing myself. I trust the plan. And any suffering I do isn’t just for  _ you,  _ you know. Kinda narcissistic to think that, isn’t it, Buddy?” a smile flickered onto his face, bright and more comforting than any tranquility imposed by the forest could be.

Her heart rate slowed just a tad, but she was able to ground herself more. The thoughts still dug their sharp claws into her mind and tugged, but she could resist being dragged down if she tried. “Do you think I’m narcissistic, Juno? I always thought I was  _ overly  _ empathetic towards the plight of others, actually. But, I won’t deny the occasional delusion of grandeur. Example number one, being confident enough to be sure we can escape Dark Matters custody.”

“Do you still think that?”

“Oh, of course,” she grinned, and took another deep, calming breath. In and out. “I put together a great team, after all. Are you ready for me to make the call?”

Juno nodded, and moved his hand from her shoulder down to her hand. He intertwined his fingers with hers and squeezed it. Buddy had to release her hand from the embrace to pull out her comms and turned on her location. Dark Matters, despite its secrecies and security protocol,  _ did  _ utilize a system of anonymous tips. Buddy called the number, listening to the automated voice message.

“You have reached the message box of Dark Matters. If you are a prank caller, I would suggest hanging up if you value having all of your limbs and organs in the proper placement. Then delete the coordinates from your memory. You should not have found us in the first place. Should you have a tip on any suspicious ongoings that require investigation, share them. You found our number for a reason after all. It isn’t easy to do,” the message ended and, surely enough, a beep followed three seconds later. Buddy cleared her throat.

“This is Buddy Aurinko. By my side is Detective Juno Steel. This message won’t last long, as I know you’re tracking and headed to my location at this very moment. You went with a low blow, didn’t you? I suppose perhaps this white flag isn’t a surprise as much as it is a plan. You have my wife. I am willing to comply with your questioning if and  _ only  _ if I see her unharmed, physically and mentally. Should she be in any worse condition than I saw her, I will not hesitate to destroy the very foundation upon which you are resting brutally and painfully. I hope we can come to a… pleasant agreement, hm? Farewell, I assume I shall be seeing a few of your agents in a few minutes.”

She turned the comms off, made a small and content noise, and turned to face Juno. “Well, now it’s just a waiting game, isn’t it? Are you frightened, Juno?”

“Just a little bit,” he admitted, his hands deep in his pockets. She could see his fingers anxiously fidgeting through the fabric. “Hard not to be. You?”

“It’s hard not to be,” she exhaled. “I fear what they may have done to Vespa to try to pry information from her. I find it… difficult, sometimes, to manage when it so often feels like my emotions are a response to hers. I feel things far too much for my own good sometimes, despite my efforts to… not.”

“You feel passionately about it enough to threaten to destroy Dark Matters to their faces,” Juno furrowed his brow.

“Yes, well, I don’t think they took too kindly to it,” she let out the ghost of a laugh, not committed or joyous enough to fully be considered whole. “But I needed to make myself clear. If they harm her, I will not be as kind and compliant as they wish me to be. I don’t make empty threats, Juno.”

“You feel that strongly, huh?”

Buddy knew how to cope with her feelings on a normal day. Perhaps she was overly empathetic with a penchant for histrionics and fiery passion, but she could manage. She was a professional who had to know how to plan and organize and set her emotions aside for later, even when rage and sadness and  _ love  _ grabbed at her with a strongman’s hands. However, later had to come eventually, and Buddy was  _ swimming  _ in the swirling monster of emotions present in her, growing stronger and stronger each time she tried to stop feeling to focus. She couldn’t  _ stop feeling.  _ She had never been able to  _ stop feeling.  _ Feelings consumed her, drove her to grandiosity, to tearing apart corruption, to threatening to burn the universe to the ground if she damn well pleased. They drove her to whispered love confessions and kisses that never wanted to end and relearning a masterpiece of a body and a woman with care and precision. Buddy couldn’t stop feeling and, even after fifteen years of being consumed by grief and guilt and heartbroken love, she didn’t want to.

“Yes, Juno, I do.”

She looked out and saw a ship approaching rapidly. Juno must have noticed it as well, given that his posture became stiff and his gaze was fixed on the horizon. “I suppose it’s time, isn’t it? We’ll be okay, darling.”

The ship landed and they both put their hands up, showing that they posed no threat. Two agents stepped out, dressed in identical black suits, impeccably well-maintained. Juno looked as if he was about to faint; Buddy inferred that all of his suspicions were correct.

“Hello, Juno,” one of the agents spoke, her voice devoid of emotion.

“Sasha…Sasha Wire...” it was hard to pinpoint what the emotion in his voice was: joy, fear, relief, or melancholy. Perhaps a blend of all of them at once. “I was right.”

“That’s Agent W to you, Steel,”  _ Sasha’s _ voice managed to grow colder, a feat Buddy was unaware was possible. “You lost the right to my first name when you became a criminal. Though, you owe me fifty creds. My high school prediction for you came true.”

“And you,” she faced Buddy.  _ Agent W _ eyes were hidden behind the dark tint of her uniform’s glasses, but Buddy still felt shivers under her gaze nonetheless. “Must be the famous Buddy Aurinko. Quite a nice threat in your message. You know we don’t take kindly to people who threaten our organization.”

“I imagine not,” her voice could never be as devoid of emotions as Agent W, but she tried to push down the emotions she was feeling. It was a futile action, knowing that she would drown in them should she keep her head under water for too long, but she needed to seem cordial. Professional, despite the fire coursing through her body. “But, if you haven’t hurt my Vespa, there is no problem.”

“Physically or mentally, I heard the message,” she replied, and her stone expression contorted into a smirk. “Though, the thing with Vespa is that there’s a great deal of mental damage already done. How would you tell the difference, Aurinko? Could you?”

Buddy wanted to lunge at her, to spew a thousand different threats, but she didn’t. She was professional and cordial, even though surely anger burned in her one good eye. Juno, however, didn’t have the self-control she did. He had no desire to keep things _professional,_ like she did. And he lunged, crying out “Don’t you  _ dare”  _ before, without a second’s hesitation, a stun laser was sent in his direction. Buddy watched as he hit the floor. Her stomach lurched.

“Agent G, stun the other!” Agent W barked. “Make sure you  _ only  _ stun. We need them alive, no matter how big of a nuisance they may be.”

Buddy opened her mouth to protest how unnecessary that was, as she was posing no threat, but she couldn’t get out a word before she felt the laser hit her and all of the volts coursing through her body before she felt her consciousness slip from her.

It was the first stun blast she had felt in quite some time. Her consciousness left her with the feeling of falling 250 stories and her own name echoing in her ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello bitches it's Sasha Wire time. Also I really love Juno and Buddy's friendship and how it's evolving.... they simply Care about each other.


	8. Desecrated and Complacent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buddy wakes up in Dark Matters custody alone. She's aware they're playing a game, but she does not know what it is. All she knows is that she does not want to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for a little bit of violence and brief mentions of emeto stuff (nothing graphic)

Buddy woke up with pain flaring throughout every nerve in her body. Had she been able to risk showing vulnerability, she would cry out, but she knew the situation at hand. The cold steel tile floor gave the inclination she needed to know she wasn’t safe. Her hand was cuffed to a ring welded onto the wall. Her side stung where she knew the blaster hit, and it still felt like electricity was jolting through her body sometimes. She felt her chest sink heavy into her body once she looked at her surroundings. She could stomach the cold floor and the cuffs and the wholly unwelcoming environment she was subjected to, but what she could not let go was the fact that she was alone. And she should not have been.

“Juno..?” her voice was uncharacteristically weak. Buddy Aurinko did not take kindly to those that were so determined to sap her of her strength and make her feel small. Her mind, always the kind to wrap itself in delusions of grandeur, was devising approximately seventeen different ways she would like to burn the whole of Dark Matters down and dance in its ashes. She tugged at her cuffs, wanting to rip herself from the wall and find out where they took Juno. Then, in the back of her mind, a different voice rang out in her head. It wasn’t Juno or Vespa, whose imagined cries made her nauseous with worry. Rather, it was the calm, collected voice of Jet Sikuliaq, his advice to her echoing now in her memories.

_ “You know, Buddy, it might do you well to think about things rather than acting on emotion. A lot of your plans and wishes are very grand. That can get you in a lot of trouble,”  _ he would warn her time and time again. Buddy always defended herself and her plans, saying she  _ did  _ think about all of her plans in depth, thank you very much. Though it irked her to admit now, Jet had had a point. She would think about the plan, but not necessarily whether or not she should still do it. Once she felt strongly about something, it was unlike her to reconsider. To go back. And, oh, that certainly got her in a lot of trouble now.

Jet, for the years that they had known each other, had often functioned as a good portion of Buddy’s impulse control. He had done such a  _ spectacular  _ job that even now, with him who-knew-how-far away he was, he was keeping her in check. Buddy wanted to tear the place down, wanted to make everyone in its life hell, and she very well  _ could,  _ if it weren’t for Jet’s warnings ringing in her ears.

It wasn’t the only thing ringing in her ears. She must have hit her head a bit, which would explain the fact that it hadn’t ceased since she had woken up. It got louder the more she felt her emotions surge. Her cuffed arm was aching from being suspended above her head so, despite the pain surging through her, she fought to stand up, shaking and needing to lean against the wall to support her.

“Alright, this isn’t fair and you  _ know  _ it,” she hissed under her breath. “I surrendered peacefully. You could stand to treat me a bit better.”

She couldn’t see another person, but she could recognize one-way glass when she saw it. She was being observed,  _ watched,  _ probably hoping she would say something to herself to give them a tip. It was a useless hope on their behalf, she wasn’t  _ stupid.  _ She knew she was going to be watched; they thought she was dangerous, after all. And the fact that she was being monitored meant that, likely, Juno was being monitored as well. This alone prevented her from reaching for the tiny communicator she still felt tucked under her breast.

“I know you’re watching. I’m not an idiot,” she spoke callously. There was no time to waste. “I would be more than willing to cooperate if you agreed to my terms. Otherwise, we’re going to get nowhere very,  _ very  _ quickly.”

Silence. Not even a voice over the intercom. This was the game they wanted to play then. Buddy felt anger bubble within her— they were attacking her  _ pride.  _ Trying to injure it enough to get her to snap. There was nothing they could do to rip down her ego that her mother hadn’t done already.

Having no response from whatever agent was watching her currently left her alone with nothing but her thoughts, victim to whichever direction they chose to drift. She thought of her mother’s tendency to tear her confidence down in an attempt to toughen her skin against the big, bad universe that would never give a damn about her. The strength that she needed to survive their little game, This led her to think about her father and the body that they never found. About his kind eyes and his passion for life that they had stamped out. She had harbored a deep-seated hatred for Dark Matters  _ far  _ before they had captured her Vespa: a deep-seated hatred and a very, very healthy fear.

And now she was thinking about Vespa, and all of the things they could have done to her. They obviously weren’t taking her threats seriously; perhaps they had no qualms about harming her if they thought it would help them, regardless of Buddy’s insistence the fact that her cooperation hinged upon Vespa being unharmed. And Agent W— no—  _ Sasha Wire’s  _ words wormed their way into her mind.  _ “Though, the thing with Vespa is that there’s a great deal of mental damage already done. How would you tell the difference, Aurinko?”  _

They had obviously been uttered as a threat, as something to  _ scare  _ Buddy and, much to her chagrin, it had been quite effective. They already viewed Vespa as damaged goods and it was much harder to view a new scratch on something already beaten up. But Buddy would know. She would  _ always  _ know. The only thing Buddy could do was hope Sasha’s words were a tactic to psychologically manipulate her.

There was no indication of time passing within the room. She wasn’t sure if minutes or hours had passed and it made her… uncomfortable, to say the least. Every passing second was vital when she  _ still  _ had no clue where Vespa and, now, Juno were. She felt like a tiger in a cage, ready to lash out at its keepers.

“I am going to say again. If you are going to keep me here, can I at the very least have a chair? I am not as young as I used to be, surely you have that in your file for me,” she tried to resist the urge within her to yell and scream and demand to see her family. They weren’t going to see her cry. She wasn’t going to give them the luxury.

Nothing again. The silence made Buddy want to claw her one remaining eye out in frustration. She wanted to tear her cuff from the wall and rip the door off its hinges. She craved well-earned blood on her hands. No. Juno wouldn’t like that— he was opposed to anyone killing for his sake. But,  _ god,  _ was it tempting. She tugged her arm, noticing right away that the cuffs were much… weaker and more pliable than she had been expecting. This was another test, she had quickly determined. Testing her  _ submission,  _ her  _ compliance.  _ Just how peaceful and compliant was Buddy Aurinko truly? It all depended on how long she would sit cuffed to the wall, waiting for her cries to be answered. She hated mind games like this; she had always preferred to catch her flies with honey before swatting them down. Dark Matters chose a very different game.

She was restless and jittery now, unable to stay still. She paced the length her cuffs would let her, her free arm’s fingers drummed nonstop at her side. Should she stop, even for a moment, the energy would build and build into a pile of gunpowder just  _ yearning  _ for the spark to ignite it. She heard the tiny  _ click  _ of the intercom through the speaker in the room.

A voice. Finally. A voice. Though, once she heard it she wished she hadn’t; the very sound chilled her to the bone.

“You’re never gonna find her, Buddy’s smarter than  _ all  _ of—” then the speaker clicked off, and she was left in silence again.

Dark Matters had a nasty habit of faking things in order to get into someone’s head. They forged images, sounds, feelings, all for the sake of prying the information they wanted from their prisoners. Surely, Buddy tried to tell herself, surely this was another one of those situations. That voice was false; it wasn’t  _ her  _ Vespa. They were just trying to get under her skin. She just wished they weren’t doing such a damn good job at it. Even if she was unable to control how this manipulation made her feel, she could at the very least control her reaction to it. So, she remained stone-faced (though, she feared they saw her jump at the initial sound of her voice. They know she was weak for Vespa, the whole damn  _ galaxy  _ knew she was weak for Vespa).

Yet, the voice made her all the more restless. She was pacing back and forth, frustrated by the lack of range the handcuff gave her.  _ God,  _ she wanted to rip it from the wall. Frustrated and with far too much anger, she slammed her hand against the metal wall. It hurt intensely for a moment which then faded to a dull sting tingling over the place of impact. She wanted to do it again and again. To let out everything she had pent up. She couldn’t, she reminded herself. Such actions exposed emotion, which exposed vulnerability. Buddy had to let them know she was winning this game. Jet would be proud of her, she thought, and the idea brought brief, momentary comfort. But it couldn’t last. Not in a situation designed to breed discomfort.

Her chronic pain was flaring up again and the spasms and aches of her muscles threatened to make her cry out more than any emotional duress. This, too, was most likely intentional, she figured. They had that marked down as well. She had always struggled with chronic pain of some sort, and the radiation damaged her body and worsened the condition. In the file Rita had pulled up, they had all of her weaknesses listed. Her chronic pain, frequent migraines, her food allergies, her damaged organs, all major past injuries that exposed her weak points. And, in their design of her cell, they tried to exploit every last one of them. There was no way for her to exist comfortably in the cell. Standing made her back and legs scream out in pain, but she could only sit flat on the ground, where her arm was suspended in a way that made the arm and her shoulder ache. Then, when the discomfort finally grew too large, she would have to stand again and  _ that  _ was nearly unbearable.

“I know what you’re doing, you know, it isn’t going to work,” she spat at the glass. “And I was so hoping we could be amicable about it. I won’t comply under these conditions, you know. I’m a woman of my word.”

She knew she wasn’t going to get a response but, goddammit, she wanted to be  _ heard.  _ No one was going to make Buddy Aurinko into their bitch, that much was certain. If this was a waiting game, she would wait it out. After all, she had pushed past spastic bouts of pain for the sake of jobs in the past, getting by with wincing through it and spending far too long in bed in the days following. Dark Matters was smart and persistent, but Buddy had them beat. She was clever, yes, but, more importantly, she was more stubborn than anyone else. Dark Matters would continue to prod at her weaknesses, but Buddy knew that, at the end of it all, she would win. There was no other option.

The handcuffs were so tantalizingly easy to undo. But, perhaps this was another test. Undoing them would show weakness, impatience. It would make her fail. It was so difficult to play a game when you did not know the ruleset that your opponent was using, when you could not see your opponents face to decipher their next move, when you were on completely different levels. There was a chair in the corner of the room, far out of her reach. Bastards. She waited for what felt like an eternity longer before she acted again.

“If you won’t play my game, I won’t play yours,” she muttered as she unpinned her bangs, letting the red curls fall out of place. She didn’t care if this agent saw the graying skin— they probably already knew it was there, so what did it  _ matter?  _ What did anything matter in retrospect? With the hairpin now in her free hand, she unlocked her handcuff. She was going to be complacent; she just wanted to grab the chair.

The moment the handcuffs unclicked and Buddy started to grab the chair, the intercom clicked on again. And then a raspy, bloodcurdling scream: the kind that brought her back fifteen years. She could never erase the image of Vespa falling from her head, nor the feeling of guilt that consumed her along with it. That terrible scream continued, dissolving into desperate, heavy pants and choked back tears. Buddy felt as if her legs were going to give out from under her. Emotion told her to scream and revolt and make their lives hell for laying a single finger on the woman she loved. Logic told her this was likely another move in their game to get her to snap. Vespa was fine most likely. They  _ wouldn’t.  _ This was all just another trick. She dragged the chair back and sat down. Another pained scream caused Buddy to clench her jaw. She redid her handcuffs and pinned her hair back into place. She hoped, through the glass, it looked calm. She hoped that they could not see how  _ awfully  _ her hands shook with fear.

Buddy did not make a sound, even as she heard Vespa’s exhausted gasps for air. They were trying to win and she wasn’t going to let them. She was just going to undo what she had done to cause the noise over the intercom. Then maybe the noise would cease. Operant conditioning: when the desired action is performed, the negative stimulus is taken away. Such a thing was designed to encourage her to comply.

“Bud… Please…” she heard Vespa cough and sputter out. The assassin retched, her breathing was labored. “Fuck you! I’m not crying! I’ll rip your fucking throat out, we’ll see who’s crying then, huh? Fuck you! Fuck all of you! Don’t fucking come near me again, I’ll kill you! I’ll do it!”

No. She had had enough of hearing it. She had done what they wanted, hadn’t she? She was handcuffed again. She just wanted it to  _ stop.  _ Wanted Vespa to stop hurting. Or maybe it was better if she could hear everything because now, even if they turned off the intercom, she would be frightened. Her mind would paint the picture for her. She wanted to hear Vespa being okay, wanted to  _ see  _ her, to hold her, to run her hands through her pretty green hair and tell her that it was going to be okay. That Buddy was going to make it okay.

“I’m playing your game, okay?” Buddy screamed. “I put the damn handcuffs back on! Stop it!”

A small beep followed by a desperate, guttural yelling. Vespa was  _ trying  _ to suppress her cries, but they were pried out from her. Buddy felt her stomach churn. They didn’t care about her compliance; they just wanted to see her reach the tipping point. She didn’t want to cry, but the sobs slipped from her lips. She was normally so good at this. At keeping her cool. They wanted to break her. They were doing a damn good job.

“STOP IT! I’m playing your damn game, aren’t I? I put the damn handcuffs back on!” Buddy screamed at the top of her lungs. Her throat felt hoarse from its strain. “Just stop it! Please!”

Even if it  _ was  _ most likely a simulated scream, it was one Buddy never wanted to listen to again. It felt like she was being stabbed repeatedly and every labored breath was a twist of the serrated blade.

Her face was hot and streaked with tears she did not want to let out. All of a sudden, every painful thought she had had came hurled at her. Over and over again, her mind repeated.  _ This is all your fault, Buddy. This is all your fault. You should have tried harder to get her to stay. You should have dragged her back when you saw her in the forest. You should have tried. You should have tried. This is all your fault. Every scream, every ounce of pain. This is all your fault. _

Maybe she could have gotten Vespa to stay; she never should have been alone, so vulnerable to be captured. Then, a different stream of thought hit her. Her hurt made her angry. If Vespa hadn’t been so  _ damn  _ stubborn—

Was she angry at Vespa? Perhaps. Jet had told her that anger was a secondary emotion, and that was true enough. Vespa’s actions  _ hurt,  _ and that bled into anger. If Vespa had just been willing to talk things out, none of this would have  _ happened.  _ She wouldn’t be here, being tortured like this. She wouldn’t have broken. Vespa wouldn’t be  _ hurting.  _ If only she had just  _ listened for once in her life— _

“I told you not to hurt her,” she choked out.

The door of her cell slid open and there, standing tall and unbothered and  _ irritatingly cocky  _ was Agent W. Her face lacked any noticeable expression beyond professional apathy, not even a hint of joy or satisfaction at the fact that she had gotten her target to crack. That she had broken Buddy Aurinko. And, for some reason unbeknownst to her, that irked Buddy more than anything. She was not an easy target, the least the agent could do was gloat.

“I must say, Aurinko, I’m  _ very  _ impressed,” she gave no hint of emotion in her voice as she spoke. “You lasted quite a while. You’ve been up for hours. Very impressive. You even made it a decent way into listening to Miss Ilkay screaming before you even shed a tear.”

“I made a deal upon my surrender, Sasha, as you well recall. I would be compliant so long as no physical, mental, or emotional harm was inflicted upon my Vespa,” Buddy spat. “And I made it clear what my terms and conditions were. I thought I made the consequences apparent as well.”

“It’s Agent W to you, Aurinko. And we at Dark Matters aren’t afraid of your empty threats. You can’t tear us down. You can kill the members of this ship perhaps, but it won’t really make a dent in anything at all. I mean, even our own agents have no moral qualms about killing their coworkers just to be first in line for a few thousand cred bonus at the end of the year. Dark Matters isn’t something you can touch. Some things are bigger than you can ever be. Some things you are too small and insignificant to ever come close tearing down. And you just have to learn to accept things the way that they are.”

“I must say, it really is outstanding to find a woman so dedicated to licking the boots of others that she’s lost any value her own individuality once carried. It’s tragic really, Sasha. Juno told me you used to be so charming.”

“Bringing up Juno won’t make me sympathetic towards you. I feel no sympathy for him either. He’s always been too keen to get into trouble. But, then again, I suppose that’s what drew him to you, isn’t it? A good heart with a penchant for trouble,” Buddy could  _ almost  _ detect a sense of fondness in her voice when she spoke of him. It was a very shaky “almost”.

“Where is he?”

“I’m afraid I’m not going to tell you that, Aurinko.”

“You know, I’m  _ really  _ not fond of your little organization here at the moment. If you want me to answer your questions, we  _ must  _ compromise. You’ve already broken the original terms I’ve given you or, at the very least, have tried to convince me that you’ve broken the terms.”

“It’s all very charming,” Sasha leaned against the wall at a point where she was just a bit outside of Buddy’s reach. “You think we’re on equal footing here. That we’re willing to compromise. You’ve misunderstood the situation. You have no power here. Nothing you can wave over our heads. Your terms don’t matter.”

“You need information from me, don’t you? After all, isn’t that why you decided to bring us in alive rather than just shoot us down like animals during hunting season?” her voice was laced with well-deserved bitterness.

At this question, Sasha Wire fell silent. Despite the requirements of her job, a hint of emotion crept onto her face. Just what exactly that feeling was Buddy couldn’t say, but she could see it there.

“I could kill you if I wanted to,” she eventually decided on saying. “Keep that in mind when you stubbornly insist upon not answering.”

“Won’t that upset your superiors?”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Aurinko,” Sasha let out a little laugh. “I don’t have any superiors to answer to. I am the superior.”

“Oh, you were promoted to Director? Very impressive,” Buddy raised an eyebrow. “Last Juno heard you were still a subdirector. Where is he, by the way?”

“Not telling. Maybe I’ll let you know when you answer the questions I have for you.”

“Stubborn little thing, aren’t you?” Buddy sneered. “I told you my stipulations. Since I cannot be certain Vespa is not injured, I want to see her. Based on her condition, I’ll decide whether or not I continue with the interrogation as planned.”

“You really do think you have power, don’t you? That’s quite irritating, you know.”

“I’m not really the type to fully give myself into submission, Sasha. Well, not for a few dates at the very least. And, while I’m sure you’re quite lovely underneath the suit and the utter lack of morals, I’m afraid I’m already spoken for.”

“We know you’re after the Curemother Prime,” Sasha’s voice now hinted at some emotion Buddy could grasp easier. Annoyance… frustration, perhaps? Now  _ that  _ was fun. She was getting somewhere with her.

Dark Matters could break Buddy down, tear her bleeding heart right out of her ribcage and spit on it in front of her, but they truly underestimated her. She was persistent, after all, and it had now very recently become her goal to break them right back. Though, she wasn’t one for sorrow and tears. Buddy Aurinko brought things down in a blaze of glory. She was going to watch Sasha Wire ignite right in front of her and she was going to bask in the warmth of the flame. Metaphorically, of course, she reminded herself. Juno would never forgive her otherwise.

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about, Sasha,” Buddy inspected her nails as if she had nothing better to do with her time. As if the woman in front of her hadn’t just pulled ugly sobs out from her core.

“Don’t play stupid. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Well you see, when you stunned me during my arrest, it gave me an absolutely  _ horrid _ bout of amnesia. Surely, if I could see my wife or even Juno, it might help to jog those very, very fuzzy memories.”

Sasha kicked the chair out from under Buddy’s legs, causing her to land on her knees back on the steel floor. Buddy inhaled sharply as she felt the impact. “I’m not playing games with you, Aurinko. Don’t make me hurt you.”

“You wouldn’t have to if you listened to my one, very simple request. I would like to see the members of my family that you have in your custody. Surely, that isn’t unreasonable,” Buddy sat back up against the wall. “You don’t seem like the type who likes to get her knuckles bruised with physical violence.”

“I don’t,” a curt response. “You could save me from that fate if you just answered the question.”

“You could very easily save yourself from that fate as well, Sasha,” Buddy sighed. “We could continue on and on like this if you like but I can feel myself aging as this conversation goes on. Now I would prefer you either take me to see Vespa or save yourself the time and just kill me now.”

It was a risky thing to say, yes, but you needed to take a great risk for a great reward. Buddy had always been quite the gambler; she had the necessary charm for it all. But Sasha Wire was quite a hard woman to read. She could only hope she had a good enough hand to play.

Sasha’s hand tangled itself in Buddy’s red curls and  _ tugged  _ hard, bringing her up off the floor to meet her eye to eye. She was, admittedly,  _ much  _ stronger than Buddy gave her credit for. And, admittedly, having her hair pulled like that  _ hurt  _ quite a lot. She made eye contact with Sasha—  _ real  _ eye contact, where she could see beyond the very dark sunglasses that were part of her uniform. They were cold, but she could see  _ something  _ in there. It was so incredibly difficult to discern, but maybe Agent W did have a heart after all. No, perhaps Director W was heartless and just as ruthless as the job required, but Sasha Wire had a heart she tried to bury along with every emotion that came with it. Buddy knew better than anyone how that could drown a person.

Sasha released her grip on Buddy’s hair as she tossed her to the floor like a ragdoll. “Fine. If you want to play this game, I’ll play. I don’t want to kill you, Aurinko.”

“So that means?”

“I don’t want to, but I will if I must. However,” she let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “I will compromise with you. Don’t get too cocky.”

Buddy felt tears well up in the back of her throat. She didn’t know why. Sasha started to leave the room. “Where are you going?” she rasped out, partially afraid of her being subjected to the same treatment she had experienced before Sasha entered the room. The silence and the screaming. Buddy could put up a good fight with Sasha in front of her— she had always been better at interacting with people in person— but she knew, despite her fighting spirit not wanting to admit to it, that that had broken her down. Had she been forced to continue with the same thing, over and over and over again, she might just fall apart completely. It was her fault, for falling in love so wholly. It made her vulnerable and the most dangerous thing a thief could be was vulnerable. But it was worth it, Buddy had decided over two decades ago. It was well worth the risk. High stakes for high rewards. She had always been a gambler and, looking at the hand that cold, indifferent universe splayed out onto the table, she was still quite the champion.

“I’m going to grab your wife. Then the two of you can answer my questions.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you think sasha wire effectively utilized girl power in becoming the director of a violent and corrupt agency and torturing buddy aurinko?


	9. Part of Me Attached to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Girls Are Communicating. Sasha Wire explains why she's captured them.

Sasha hadn’t been gone for long, but it felt like she was able to weave hours out of seconds. Her stomach twisted with anxiety as she went over the possibilities of the situation. Not even an hour ago, they were doing their best to get Buddy to break. They picked apart every weakness, placed pain upon her still-aching bones, tormented her with the pained screams of her lover until they made her collapse and sob. She picked her handcuff again, anticipating another shrieking noise. Nothing came. She picked up the chair from where it had been knocked over and sat in it. She did not redo the handcuff. The silence rang clear in the room still. The probability of this being another one of their tricks was high. She already knew they had robots that could take their form— she had fallen for that once already— perhaps it wouldn’t really be Vespa, but an imitation in order to pry information from her. Director Wire was ruthless, after all. But, perhaps Sasha wasn’t.

Buddy then found herself fixating on the agent that kept her here: Sasha Wire, the childhood best friend of Juno Steel, the current director of Dark Matters, and the woman who confused Buddy the more she thought about her. It made  _ sense  _ for this to be a trick, mostly because Buddy refused to attribute any human goodness to an agency that claimed to commit atrocities “for the greater good” of it all. She thought about how the coldness of her eyes clashed with the warmth at their center. It was hard to tell whether or not Sasha had excised any sense of emotions in favor of pure law and order and that was enough to cause anxiety— the uncertainty made her actions hard to predict. If Buddy could be certain there was no heart in Sasha Wire, then she knew that Vespa would just be used as another trap. Another false hope. A twist of the knife already lodged in her ribcage. But, when her eyes flashed with just a  _ taste  _ of empathy, it gave Buddy enough reasonable doubt to be able to nourish that hope in the first place.

All of these worries and thoughts seemed to melt off of her mind momentarily when the door opened. There she was and the shitty, fluorescent lighting of the cell looked like an angelic glow upon her scarred skin. The name  _ Vespa  _ came from Buddy’s mouth as a relieved, exhaling breath. She seemed… relatively unharmed. It was a dirty  _ trick  _ all along. She wasn’t sure whether to be furious at the deception or overjoyed at seeing her without major injury. She had a scrape or two, some bruised knuckles (her Vespa was always a fighter). The bags under her eyes were a bit darker, a bit deeper.

The two stood a safe distance from one another, just looking. It conjured a different image in her mind: one of the two of them reunited at the lighthouse after all those years, the scene that restarted this new life. The feet between them felt like miles back then, with both of them reaching for a woman who was a total stranger, haunted by familiarity and a love that time could never fade. This… this felt similar. The uncertainty of negative space.

Wire cleared her throat. “I have to check on the other prisoner. He’s got a nasty tendency to cause trouble,” she spoke plainly, then Buddy heard her mumble under her breath with a tone that could only be taken as fondness. “It’s like fifteen years never passed, I swear.”

The agent left, and the two were alone again. Looking at Vespa, small and frightened but wholly  _ beautiful,  _ Buddy felt like that mumbling couldn’t ring more true. Like fifteen years never passed. They hadn’t moved a muscle, fear making both too hesitant to make the first move.

“Tell me something only Buddy and I would know,” Vespa clears her throat, paranoia apparent in every aspect of her tense muscles and wide eyes. A test— it was logical. She wondered what tortures they’d exposed Vespa to in the days she had been captured.

“You hated me until the first time we kissed,” Buddy’s words were loving as she called upon a distant memory. “We were working together,  _ not  _ by choice, and I needed to make the story I was selling believable. I kissed you on top of the pool table of that  _ horrific  _ Ionian bar. I think you hated me a little bit after as well, but at least after that it was hatred with heavy romantic and sexual tension. Your turn. Something that only Vespa and I would know.”

“It was _always_ hatred with heavy and romantic tension. The kiss just… worsened the situation. Or bettered it depending on your view,” Vespa seemed to relax her posture, just a bit. Buddy had convinced her. “You have a little birthmark on your hip. It’s _almost_ heart-shaped and you like it because you’re a giant _sap_ who likes to think it’s a mark from Cupid himself. I’ve lost track of the amount of kisses I’ve placed there.”

“It’s you.”

“It’s me.”

And the distance between them collapsed and they collided in a messy kiss, all bumping noses and desperate hands. Like they were young again. Even if the questions didn’t convince her, the kiss did. Vespa kissed her like she was starving,  _ so  _ genuine and vulnerable. Her guard melted away under the embrace in a way that was undeniably human. Undeniably  _ Vespa.  _ Buddy pulled away with tears in her eye and stupid, ugly sobs coming out of her.

“Darling…” she repeated over and over again through kisses of her hands and her face. “Darling, darling, darling.”

“Bud…” Vespa grabbed her hands and kissed the palms gently. “Buddy, you absolute  _ idiot.  _ Why did you—”

Why did she do it? What was she thinking? Those questions were a motif in her life, recurring over and over again with every bold, slightly reckless and entirely passionate decision she made. They came from her mother with venom in her voice as she criticized any stupid decision she made when her ego surpassed her abilities. The questions left Jet’s mouth every time Buddy stayed out too late, wandering in sick and irradiated. He asked those to her when she collapsed into his arms, inches away from death as he scrambled to save the lovesick Icarus who got too close to the toxic sun. Why? She had to. What was supposed to happen if she  _ didn’t?  _ What was she thinking? Perhaps too much to articulate, but she was always feeling much, much more.

“I told you I was going to save you, my love,” it felt a little bit foolish to say. A bit overly chivalrous, perhaps, she imagined grandiose tales of knights in shining armor saving the princess. Buddy had always had a taste for grandeur. “You trusted me to save you.”

“I do,” Vespa did not break eye contact as she spoke. “I… I don’t know what you’ve got planned in that brilliant mind of yours. It’s probably  _ dangerous  _ and reckless and a little bit stupid and also ten times more clever than anything else any sucker in the galaxy could think up.”

Her words were a warm tide that completely washed over Buddy’s doubts. Vespa believed in her to save the day and she had decided a long time ago that Buddy was never going to let her down. She had done it twice before and each time tore her apart atom by atom and she made the clear decision that she was  _ not  _ going to do it a third time, no matter what fought against her. Buddy Aurinko wasn’t going to let anything— not the universe, and certainly not Dark Matters— stop her from keeping her promise. Not this time.

The two sat on the floor, Vespa with her arm wrapped around Buddy’s shoulder and Buddy’s head resting on her chest. They sat in silence for a bit. Buddy took deep breaths, taking in every sensation: the secure firmness with which she was being held; the way Vespa’s calloused thumbs felt running in light circles on the soft, bare skin of her forearm; her smell. Her  _ smell,  _ it was odd, she couldn’t quite explain it. It wasn’t the enticing aroma of the foreign, expensive perfume Buddy wore. It was just the natural way she smelled was entrancing and soothing and Buddy had tried for years to break it down into a formula of herbs and spices but she failed to come up with any word for it but one: home. Vespa smelled like home. Buddy broke the silence.

“Vespa?” her voice trembled, just a bit. She would have been content sitting in that tranquil quiet for eternity, but the world needed to keep on moving. They needed to keep on moving.

“What’s up?”

And then Buddy’s mind raced with a universe worth of questions: ones that hurt Buddy, ones that would hurt Vespa, ones that might drive the rift between them further apart in an attempt to bring them closer together, ones that dangled their future together in front of their faces by a single, fraying thread. The desired inquisition was backed by all of these feelings that had settled their home in her gut: anger, sadness, betrayal, four out of the five stages of grief (Buddy had never gotten around to acceptance; it always led to her wrapping all the way back to denial). The longer she saw Vespa’s sharp jawline and felt her strong embrace, she recalled that feeling of her heart splitting in two when she woke up to that empty bed.

How long? She wanted to ask. How long would this last again until they got separated once more? How long until she was left, once more, with an empty bed and an empty feeling making its home in the pit of her stomach? How long was Vespa going to stay this time?

_ Why?  _ was another question on her mind. Why did she leave without considering the dire consequences of the situation? Why did she decide that her insecurities about the future was worth the price of shattering the future Buddy had built up for them.

The questions kept rolling through her mind, each one more and more dangerous to ask. Vespa had just returned; this anger and hurt was not worth the risk of scaring her off again. Buddy leaned into Vespa more and she let out a sigh.

“Will you stay with me, darling?” she managed to voice. Her thoughts were nebulae that she tried to piece into cohesive constellations. “When all of this is through?”

“Of course, Bud, I don’t—” Vespa cut herself off. “Listen, I told you why I left. I didn’t want me to get you guys caught and killed. They were using my debtor tag to track us and—”

“I heard you quite clearly, darling, but I am not particularly interested in your self-pity at the moment. You have a very selfish tendency to be self-sacrificing. And while that may sound paradoxical, you and I both know that you risk yourself because, to you, your life is not a high price to pay,” okay. Maybe she sounded angrier than intended. “What you fail to consider, however, is that it is a  _ very  _ steep price tag to me. And I would prefer you to stop placing bets with my universe as their wager.”

“I’m sorry,” Vespa curled in on herself. “God, I’m so  _ fucking  _ sorry. I… I weighed it for so long in my head. It gets real hard to push when your brain works against you at every single turn. All I could think of was ways I could get you killed and how I care too much about everyone on that damn ship to have risked it. I… I knew it would hurt you. And I did it anyone because I’m too damn selfish and I—”

Buddy pulled Vespa’s hands from her face. “It does very little good now to beat yourself up over it, no matter how stupid the decision  _ was.  _ I ask my question once more. Will you stay? When all of this is over?”

Vespa kissed her once again, and Buddy felt the dampness of Vespa’s tears upon her own cheek. Buddy melted into the kiss— but, at the same time, she felt her eyes sting with her own tears that wanted to escape. She didn’t necessarily  _ want  _ to cry at this moment— but perhaps the intensity of every emotion rising in her demanded it. The feeling of Vespa’s mouth and hands (a sensation she feared she might have never been able to feel again— she realized as relief swept over her) drew out an intensity from her. She didn’t  _ want  _ to pull away— she never wanted to pull away. At that moment, the universe could disintegrate into nothing and it wouldn’t matter, so long as Buddy could spend the remainder of her eternity kissing Vespa.

“Bud…” Vespa broke the kiss. “I want to stay. With you. Hell, with Steel and Sikuliaq and Rita and even fucking Ransom even though he annoys the piss out of me, but… I— I don’t know how the hell we’re gonna pull this off. We know that they can find us now. Through me.”

“I know.”

“I’m a danger to all of you.”

Buddy let out a sigh that came from deep within her chest. “I know. My offer still stands, despite all of it. Will you come back? Will you stay for good?”

She looked Vespa in the eyes and found a mess of conflict in them. Vespa was never the type to make things easy for herself— when things came easily, it meant one of two things: either she didn’t deserve it, or it was a trap. So, things became overcomplicated in order to justify their presence. Buddy saw it clearly: fear and guilt creased into her worry lines,  _ fierce  _ love in the way her pupils dilated when they were focused on her— her face was a portrait of internal conflict. Buddy felt her as if her throat had never been drier as she anticipated the answer. She was… uncertain.

There was her  _ hope,  _ of course. Hope that Vespa would come to her senses— that she would choose to stay. And this was one of those rare, glimmering moments where the hopeful answer was also the logical one. Yet, a crumb of doubt always managed to weasel its way into her head— perhaps to keep her grounded, to help shield her (only slightly) from disappointment. The pause between phrases grew cumbersome. The worry lines deepened as Vespa twisted her expression. Her hands migrated to her forearms, short, blunt nails futilely picking at her skin.

“We need to go over security protocol more thoroughly— talk to Rita, make sure that she can block any signal or route the tracking chip through a proxy,” her tone was very dry and to-the-point before it softened and Buddy got to see that beautiful smile that stole the air from her lungs. “But, yes, I’ll stay. For good.”

And she  _ sobbed.  _ Embarrassed by the intensity, she covered her face, crying into her palms but unable to stop crying. A hand touched her shoulder. Then her cheek— not the proper one. It touched the dead one— where she could only  _ partially _ feel it in what nerve cells were left alive. Her stomach twisted in panic. Vespa intertwined their fingers and lowered their hands. Her bangs were moved out of place—

“Hey— it’s okay,” she cooed. She placed a kiss on the dying skin— a gesture so soft and tender that the Reaper himself would have stopped in his tracks to swoon. The way she looked at her would have Death himself dissolve— perhaps that’s why Vespa always made her feel invincible. “You really are beautiful, you know that?” Vespa twirls a tendril that  _ should have been  _ covering her face around her finger.

Looking at Vespa, she was aware of the fake eye in her socket— the way the lens clicked like a camera, the way it moved unnaturally. It was half functional, but it was worth the decreased price and increased autonomy compared to the monster that had burrowed into Juno’s head. Vespa had seen her face every night, uncovered, exposed— every bit of radiation damage explicitly visible. Yet, being looked at with so much attention and adoration worsened the insecurity.

“I was much prettier in my prime. You’ve worn age better than I have, love,” she darted her eyes away. “At the very least, your complexion is much better. Your face is fully intact.”

“Your mind is fully intact,” Vespa’s tone was teasing, her eyes squinting up as she smiled. Then it relaxed again, and a thumb stroked the damaged skin. “I mean it though. You really  _ are  _ beautiful. No matter which way your hair falls. I… god, it sounds stupid— but— you do know that every time I see you, I fall in love with you again? My heart pounds in my ribcage and all I can think is  _ wow.  _ I’ve somehow managed to con the most beautiful person in the galaxy into falling in love with me. And I  _ swoon.” _

“You’re terribly cliche, you know,” Buddy felt her cheeks grow warmer— and butterflies swirled in her stomach like she was some kind of schoolgirl. She cleared her throat. “Sasha is certainly taking her time getting here, isn’t she?”

“I imagine Steel’s giving her an earful. He’s good at talking a lot without saying a thing,” Vespa chuckled as she spoke. It made Buddy’s heart swell— to hear such fondness from her. “Do you want me to fix your hair before she comes back? I know you, uh, get anxious about it.”

Buddy nodded and with a loving  _ thank you, darling,  _ Vespa undid the pins and held them in one hand. She grabbed the front section of her hair and twirled it around her finger before draping it in front of her face so that it glamorously hid any scarring that was there. She lifted it from its place to pepper a few kisses on the area she was about to cover. She then adjusted the bangs once again and pinned them securely, allowing her hand to brush lightly down her cheek and her neck before it made its home on her shoulder. Buddy could hear her whisper, through a sigh, one word:  _ “Ethereal.” _

Sasha opened the cell again and Buddy heard the second voice before she saw the face. That’s how it always was with Juno Steel though, wasn’t it? He had a habit of making himself heard before he made himself seen. Sasha knew this too, and the smile on her lips a sight Buddy thought would have been impossible. Juno had made her  _ laugh  _ and, despite being handcuffed, he did not look stressed.

“Alright, Sasha, you can let me loose now,” he shook his head. “We’ve reached our destination  _ and  _ you won the bet.”

“Well, you’ve always been a terrible gambler, Juno,” she replied. “You really should have more faith in the dignity of your crewmates. Most people don’t think about sex in a dangerous situation. I just think you’re a masochist so the danger is an added bonus factor for you.”

“Is  _ that  _ what your bet was, Steel? Don’t be nasty,” Vespa growled. “Sicko.”

“Hey, it’s not what it—”

“Did you  _ not  _ say  _ Sasha, I’m willing to bet twenty creds they’re all over each other when we walk in there,  _ Juno? Unless you were talking about some other bet?”

Buddy nearly choked on her own spit. The way Juno’s face paled in fear made laughter rise within her. “Really, Juno. Not everyone has the same, ah,  _ drive  _ as you and Ransom.”

“I— we—  _ listen, it’s not like—  _ it’s not  _ that  _ bad!” Juno stammered out. “Anyway, Sasha, don’t you have questions to ask us or something?”

“Thank you. I do. If you three would follow me peacefully, there’s a more comfortable interrogation room. One with actual cushioned chairs instead of one metal seat. It’s your choice, however.”

Buddy watched every muscle in Vespa’s body tense up. Her hand instinctively reached for her side, to grab a knife that had been removed from her person, presumably since her capture.

“I’m not going to let you  _ kill  _ us, Wire,” she growled. “Stop gloating about it.”

“I said nothing about killing you, Ilkay,” she retorted. “I’m not gloating; I’m asking to move to a different room.”

“But— Buddy, you  _ heard  _ it, right?” Vespa turned to her, her eyebrows knit together and tears of frustration welled up in her lovely, dark eyes. She saw the realization dawn on her face and heard Vespa swear under her breath. “Of  _ fucking  _ course,” an exasperated sigh, her nails dug crescents into her palms. “Wire, can you repeat what you said?”

Wire repeated it and this time, Vespa seemed to hear the message more clearly, more grounded. Buddy had been trying to adjust to the way Vespa’s mind had changed and partially damned herself for not handling it well. Perhaps if she understood  _ more,  _ if she could  _ help  _ Vespa instead of starting stupid fights with her, Vespa never would have felt the need to run. The truth was that Buddy didn’t understand, nor could she ever  _ really  _ fully “get” how Vespa’s mind worked. All she could do was try to ground her when the voices burrowed too deeply into her brain, try to tell her that the ghosts her gaze fixated on were figments. But all it seemed to do was frustrate both of them. Vespa didn’t want her pity, and Buddy insisted there was no  _ pity,  _ only concern. It still made for a rocky situation, however.

It would have all been so much less frustrating if Vespa hadn’t stuck to the conclusion that she was washed up so stubbornly. They had been the greatest thieves in the galaxy and they still had it: Buddy  _ knew  _ this to be fact. Vespa was just as cunning and clever and skilled as she had been, Buddy was still as charismatic and passionate and visionary. She looked at Vespa again, the frustration with which she clenched her fist, the bags under her eyes weighed down with fatigue. And she felt her own fatigue weighing down on her muscles, pain pressing down on her nervous system like a maestro on piano keys in short, rolling pressure points. In this brief moment of introspection, she felt their age hit her. Buddy had been so focused on convincing Vespa she was useful and, in order to prove her point, had been assigning her the same things she would have sixteen years ago. Her hand was trying to force recovery, to force things to go back to normal. Feeling the false eye roll around in her skull, the realization sunk in further. They would never get fifteen years back; they would never be the same Buddy and Vespa. And that was okay. They had to learn how to be who they were in the present. Buddy couldn’t push Vespa out of fifteen years of radiation poisoning into the same competence she had possessed as a healthy woman: now, she had only just learned that she didn’t need to.

“What are you thinking about?” Vespa whispered to her. “You’ve got that look on your face. And, before you ask  _ what look,  _ I’ve known you for a quarter of a century. You can’t lie.”

“I apologize. For not being as good of a captain as I should have. And for, potentially, being an even worse partner,” Buddy squeezed her hand. “I can’t expect you to be exactly the way you were before we parted. I focused too much on convincing you that you weren’t broken that I refused to accommodate how you were hurting.”

“This is a  _ great  _ conversation to have when we’re back on the ship. For now, I don’t want to air our dirty laundry out in front of a potential enemy agent,” Vespa squeezed her hand thrice. A silent gesture conveying an  _ I love you.  _ Buddy responded with four.  _ I love you too. _

She looked at Juno and Sasha walking and the lack of fear in either of their postures. For a potential enemy agent, she certainly had let her professionalism fade. According to Juno, they had only really spoken twice in the past fifteen years. Yet, they interacted with each other as if it had only been days. Buddy smiled knowingly. She knew how that could feel.

The three of them took their seats in the interrogation room. Sasha was right, it  _ was  _ more comfortable. The fluorescent lighting didn’t feel cold and distant like it had in the cell; the chairs provided some relief to Buddy’s aching back. Sasha sat on the other side of the table, her posture almost impossibly straight. She stood with dignity, like a person who  _ knew  _ she had a purpose in the universe and, moreso, knew exactly what that purpose was.

“You’re after the Curemother Prime,” she stated bluntly. “The list of items you’ve procured have suggested such. It’s a good plan, I have to admit.”

“Thank you, I am very clever. But flattering my ego won’t do much for you, I’m afraid. We can go back and forth sharing how impressed we are with each other until the Plutonian New Year but it won’t accomplish a damn thing. Where are you headed with this, Sasha? How did you find out that the theft of these objects were, one, us and, two, on our path to the Curemother?”

“I’m interrogating you, Aurinko. But, it’s simple. You assembled a team, members of that team were spotted. As for the Curemother, it’s a thing of legend. Criminals have been trying to figure out how to get it since its discovery. Piece together a few urban legends and you might be able to get a decent plan. The only thing is that you’re the only one ambitious enough to plan how to steal each component. What do you want with it?”

“Right to motive, are you?” she raised an eyebrow. “I fail to understand how my reasoning is relevant to Dark Matters.”

“Is it for profit?”

“No. I find the idea of profiting off of a medical necessity to be disgusting. Extorting people who just want to live. The thought nauseates me.”

“And there it is. You want to take down the Board of Fresh Starts then, I’m guessing,” she wore a smirk. Sasha was a clever one, good at getting information. Buddy pursed her lips.

“What are you getting at, Sasha?” Juno folded his arms and groaned. “I don’t get why Dark Matters cares so much! There are thousands of thieves in the galaxy. Why do you care what  _ we’re  _ doing?”

“You’re all operating on a false presumption. You think I’m working  _ against  _ you. If Dark Matters merely wanted to stop you from getting the Curemother Prime, we would not have insisted on your team being brought in alive. If we wanted you for just information, we would not have insisted on the entire team being brought in alive. We at Dark Matters have no moral qualms about squashing those we view as being threats to the greater good, you know. I’m sure Aurinko could tell you all about it.”

Her father. Buddy didn’t know  _ why  _ a warden who was so focused on rehabilitation was viewed as dangerous enough to be eliminated. She had asked herself that question for thirty years: what did Pallas Aurinko do that went against Dark Matters’ agenda so terribly that they erased his existence away from the universe? A lump rose in the back of her throat. “Don’t mention him. That’s cruel and you know it. So, why insist on all of us being alive? It would be easier to kill us.”

“You know how to steal the Curemother. We at Dark Matters want it,” she spoke plainly, as if her words were no more serious than a coffee order. “It’s that simple. We want you to steal it for us.”

This was… admittedly, not the direction in which Buddy was planning for this to go. She was expecting blasters pointed at her head, an agent barking commands at her to spill every detail of her plan just to shoot her later. She expected a grand display of mental and physical torture, but it would never come. She tried to think of something clever to quip back with, but her mind ran dry.

“What?” Juno spoke before she got the opportunity to and Vespa’s voice joined his in perfect unison: exact mirrors of each other.

“I have to agree. What, indeed,” Buddy leaned forward, intrigued as to what exactly Sasha was going to say next. “If you think I am going to transport it from one set of corrupt hands to another, you really must take me for—”

“Dark Matters doesn’t believe the Curemother Prime is a real panacea. Well, not to the extent that the Board of Fresh Starts claims that it is, yet they’re using it to profit. To enslave others, like Miss Ilkay here, which I’m betting is  _ why  _ you’re so keen on tearing down the system. You don’t want anyone to suffer like your wife had to, just to survive. Our plan is simple. We disprove the Curemother and the Board has nothing to stand on. We find out what they’re  _ really  _ using and distribute that instead.”

“You’re asking us to steal something you don’t believe exists?” she leaned back again. “But what are you planning on doing if it  _ is  _ a real panacea? If the myth is real. Dark Matters’ attempts to disprove things has led to the discovery of very  _ real  _ horrors before.”

“Then, the plan continues as normal. Work on extracting and distributing it,” Sasha explained. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. I mean it when I say that  _ my  _ organization works for the greater good of the galaxy.”

Sasha Wire was either genuine or a fantastic liar. Buddy looked over to Vespa and they locked eyes. It was a nonverbal conversation.  _ Is she lying?  _ Buddy gestured.  _ I can’t tell, but I don’t think so.  _ Vespa showed through a shrug and a shake of her head.

“Juno,” Buddy cleared her throat. “You know her better than any of us. Surely, you would know her tells if she was lying, correct?”

“Sasha, the last time we spoke, your old boss was talking about how he was willing to let innocent civilians die if it meant it was for the greater good. He put Mick and I in danger for a psychological evaluation where he haunted you with the  _ image of your dead sister.  _ Forgive me if I don’t necessarily buy into the whole greater good crap at first glance.”

“Well, Juno, you forget that I don’t have any superiors to answer to anymore. Dark Matters is  _ my  _ organization and what I say goes. I have no doubt that any member of your team would be capable of killing me should I go back on my word. Hell, that nameless thief of yours already managed to pull the wool over my eyes once. Agent Glass, or whatever his name is.”

The options weighed heavily upon Buddy’s shoulders. It was her decision, as the head of the Aurinko Crime Family. Her eye darted to Vespa’s fingers brushing against her own, and the blood filtration bracelet on her wrist, the tiny engraving.  _ Vespa I.  _ Her stomach twisted.

“If you would like to contact the rest of your team, you’re free to use the communicator you have tucked under your right breast. Or the one tucked into Juno’s eye socket. That was a clever one, good thinking. A little disgusting, but clever.”

“You knew about them? Then why did you only confiscate some of them?” every time Buddy thought she had Sasha Wire— every time she thought she had Dark Matters— figured out, the road forked once again.

“I told you before. We are not working against you. We are asking you to work with us. Granted, me being so trusting towards you  _ has  _ caused a degree of tension between my subdirector and I, I trust my own intuition and they’re ordered to trust it. So, call your team and talk it over if you must. But, trust me when I say this is your best option. It’s for the greater good, Aurinko.”

_ For the greater good.  _ That was the phrase Director Sasha Wire had thrown around so much— the motto of the entire organization. She was enlisting Buddy to steal a myth that she didn’t believe in. The goal was mutual on the surface; to distribute the Curemother— or  _ whatever  _ medicine was being used to keep Vespa and so many others alive— and to dismantle the Board of Fresh Starts and its system of indentured servitude. Time seemed to slow down while she thought and the tension grew and thickened.

Buddy had never wanted to be called a legend: those were dead, shriveled things, past their prime. She stared at her hands and the way they had started to wrinkle, how Vespa’s hands showed the same age. They weren’t young women anymore, consumed with the hubris of feeling like youth was infinite. They had both come to the realization that time was a finite thing and so much of it had already been ripped from their desperate hands. She saw the expression in Vespa’s eyes: tired, weary, but  _ alive.  _ This task was risky, she had known it from the start. Stealing a myth was a hurdle that would either kill her or spread her name across the galaxy once more, with even more fervor than it had twenty years prior. Dark Matters added another layer of risk: there was the chance that she would carry through this entire task for nothing.  _ Worse.  _ A chance she would play a direct hand in corrupting the galaxy further.

Buddy had always wanted to do good in the universe, but optimism and inflated egos led to melted wax wings and a nasty crash into rocky waters. She had her glimmering ambitions of making places better, making  _ people  _ better, but she had to ask sometimes: what could she do? Her gaze kept shifting towards Vespa, as if she would cease to exist if she spent too long out of her line of sight. She thought about Vespa’s pessimism: her insistence that the galaxy was a collection of traps and life was a series of dodging them until you found the one that did you in. And maybe it was safer to play that way; that style of thinking had kept her alive in the murkiest parts of existence. It was based in survival, but Buddy wanted more than to  _ survive.  _ And, when Vespa looked at her like that— like Buddy swung in on a beam of starlight— she could tell that Vespa, like her, wasn’t content with simple survival. The plan was risky, unfathomably dangerous, and most likely impossible. The two kept looking at each other. Vespa smiled in a way that was hardly noticeable.  _ I believe in you,  _ she said just loud enough for Buddy to hear it.

Vespa had always made her want to do the impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments r my lifeblood.  
> this will probably only last a few more chapters. i hate writing heists and i am NOT looking forward to writing one.


End file.
